


The Quintessential First-Timer's Cookbook

by antistar_e (kaikamahine)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M, Inspired by a Movie, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amelia Ritter, 22, undergraduate at Stanford University, pretends that her life is Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain. What happens next is all very French.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quintessential First-Timer's Cookbook

**Author's Note:**

> Written for polybigbang! salvadore_hart was my artist, so be sure to check out [these excellent pieces of excellent](http://salvadore-hart.livejournal.com/39739.html) that she sacrificed her time to do :D:D
> 
> NOT, REALLY, LOOK, AREN'T THEY PRETTY *____*
> 
> This fic is heavily Amelie-inspired, but canon compliant with TSN, with all the angst that that implies.
> 
> **Warnings** : contains frank discussion about suicide, self-worth, sex, and food, and consequently, may contain triggering material.
> 
> You can read here or [@ LJ](http://veritasrecords.livejournal.com/109322.html).

-

 

_**Recipe 1**_

**1\. spaghetti and meatballs marinara**   
_The most versatile, quick, and easy-to-prepare meal that does not come in a microwavable container or a ramen noodle packet, spaghetti is an absolute fundamental staple in any beginner's cookbook. It originated in Italy, first appearing as early as the 12th century, and in can be prepared in under thirty minutes, providing a hot meal for even the laziest person. It is to be eaten as messily as possible._

_**1.** When water for spaghetti pasta reaches a boil, turn down heat and add noodles. Cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.  
 **2.** In a pan, cook the meat of your choice. When completely browned, add additional vegetables (mushrooms, olives, etc) if desired and marinara sauce. Rinse out the jar with burgundy, shake well, and add. Stir until well-mixed.  
 **3.** Strain noodles and add to the meat-and-sauce mixture.  
 **4.** Serve._

 

At this moment in time, Charlie Dockweiler is eight years old. 

He's sitting in the backseat of his mother's 2001 Kia -- which is silver and, like most Kias, looks like it would crumple like a tin can if someone looks at it wrong -- staring out the window and imagining himself wielding a giant sword, which he uses to slice down the light poles that line the side of the street, clean as butter.

Like most children his age, Charlie hates his own name and thinks it's incredibly unfair that nobody asked his opinion before they gave it to him. 

He'd rather be called Roderick (Roderick Dockweiler sounds like a supervillain, okay) or Viper, or maybe Seven -- having a name like Seven sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? At least, it makes people wonder what happened to Dockweilers One through Six. His favorite things in the world are: the way his The Thing action figure yells "it's clobberin' time!", sticking his fingers in the pits of black olives and pretending he has finger puppets, and getting to the melted juice at the bottom of a freeze pop and then looking at himself in the mirror, with blue lips and tongue.

His least favorite things in the world are: the dread he feels in the morning as he lays awake and waits for his mother to tell him it's time to get up for school, the cursive letter "s" which looks nothing like a normal "s," and the way his older sister Rachael, who wears glasses, always needs to swap glasses when she meets another person wearing them, like it's a matter of great importance that they determine who has the worst eyesight.

Charlie's family lives in San Rafael, but on Wednesdays and Fridays Rachael has ballet at a studio right on the pier in San Francisco. They're on their way home now, Rachael in the front seat, looking ridiculous in her leotard but wearing an expression of great self-importance as she tucks their mother's fast-pass back into her wallet. The Golden Gate Bridge stretches in front of them.

He rolls his eyes and goes back to looking out the window. He likes crossing the bridge. The Kia's tires sound different up here, and at night, the fog's so thick it's impossible to see the water. It's like they're suspended in nothing, stretched out in mid-flight, until they land on the other side.

It's because he's looking that Charlie sees it: the figure of a man, walking in the lamplight with his hand on the railing.

He turns his head, because pedestrians aren't uncommon on the bridge (it's a famous bridge or something) but at night they're usually joggers who flash with fancy reflective gear, and this man is wearing clothes so dark he's impossible to see. Charlie knows that's not safe, but a moment later, the fog swallows the man up, and all Charlie is left with is an impression of his hair, which swept up from his forehead like the back end of a bird.

What Charlie doesn't know is that this man is Eduardo Saverin, and he's twenty-one years old.

His favorite things in the world are: the feeling of his bag sliding off his shoulder at the end of a long day, making other people laugh so hard they go inaudible for lack of air, and the smell of dryer sheets. He attended a private high school and was the only member of his graduating class to get into Harvard, so his teachers singled him out. His driver's license expired on his birthday and he hasn't been in to the DMV to get it reissued. He uses a fake one to buy alcohol, which says his name is Lucien Smith from Minnesota and his eye color is blue.

Once, an older bartender beamed at him and shouted over the din of a busy sports night, "Hey, I'm from Minnesota, too! What part?" and Eduardo, whose knowledge of Minnesota is limited to being vaguely certain there are some lakes there, had answered, "Oh, this little nothing town by Lakeville," and wallowed in humiliation for the rest of the night.

His least favorite things in the world are: the self-consciousness that comes with being kept waiting for someone who's late, dirty socks, and the preemptive guilt he feels when he sees a homeless person and knows he's going to ignore them.

Eduardo's day has gone something like this:

He bought a bagel for breakfast from a woman with three white hairs on her chin. He'd given her a five, and she'd looked at him in pleasant surprise when he dropped the change into the tip jar, rattling in with three pennies and a paperclip.

In the back of an airport shuttle, he passed a sign on the freeway for "Embarcadero Rd" and wondered what kind of people lived there and if maybe, someday, he could give his mother a new address and hear her say, "Embarcadero, what a fun name for a street, I like that, Eduardo," and possibly, she would send him packages to that address, the "E" in Eduardo and the "E" in Embarcadero curling like backwards 3s.

He looked up weather reports for places he'd never been to (it was 80º in Calcutta, Belize, and would rain all week) and two hours ago, a lawyer smiled at him without teeth and held out a pen, expecting him to sign away all but .03% of a company he helped found.

That's less than a full percent. At this point, anyone walking into Wall St. could potentially own more of Facebook than he does, and none of them used to spend their summer evenings in complete darkness, fighting off migraines and running facts through their heads like a scrolling marquee: how many schools, how many members, how much was left in that bank account, were they going to go back to Boston for the school year and run Facebook out of their dorms like they used to, when things were good and bright and everything was a promise, not a reality (answer: no.)

By this point, Eduardo has moved past the whiteout-rage stage of this betrayal and is now firmly in the gutted, "but why?" stage, where he will spend the next good portion of his life.

Which, the way things are going, will only be the next five minutes or so.

So there's a dark kind of comfort in that.

 

-

The breeze coming off the bay is cuttingly cold, and Eduardo kind of wishes he had a bottle of something golden or amber and reeking of hard liquor (cliche or no,) less because it would make this easier and more because he could really use the warmth. He curls his fingers around the railing, his knuckles raw and red.

This isn't really part of his plan. None of this was really part of his plan, but now that he's here, it feels like a spectacular idea, to just drop off the side of the Golden Gate Bridge, as casual as stepping off a subway train.

Eduardo isn't drunk -- he is stunningly sober, in fact, but his hands are shaking and his nose runs. He wipes at it with the cuff of his sleeve.

It is 2004. In 2007, a very morbid group of individuals with impressive degrees will rank the Golden Gate Bridge as the most deadly spot for suicide jumpers, and so the city and county of San Francisco will declare the bridge off-limits for all pedestrians in an attempt to prevent exactly that. It works, to some extent: it becomes twenty times harder for jumpers to take a dive into the San Francisco Bay, but that just means they jump in front of trains instead, which is all around more inconvenient for everybody.

It's always easier for the city to treat the symptoms instead of the problem, but it doesn't matter yet, because this is 2004 and Eduardo Saverin doesn't want to die, but he wants to face tomorrow even less.

Nobody _wants_ to die, he figures. It's not hard-wired into anybody to view death as the best alternative, but right now, death seems more favorable than what's awaiting Eduardo on the other side of tonight. 

Yeah, no, he doesn't even have _words_ for how much he does not want to face tomorrow: the feeling of it alone is like brushing up against something ice-cold in the forefront of his mind, and he jerks away from it instinctively, leaving nothing but a sour, tight nut of nausea and anxiety in his stomach.

He doesn't know what he's going to do _tonight,_ either -- the original plan, obviously, was to get spectacularly drunk at the millionth-member party and pass out with his friends (and assorted strangers that Eduardo was planning on getting to know at some point, being their sort-of _boss_ and all,) at their place, when alcohol would make him more amenable to Sean Parker's presence and his to Eduardo's. That's not going to happen now, so what? Does he kill time till he can go back to the Webster St. house, wait for Mark to overcome his hangover and try to talk to him?

(Because when has _that_ ever worked?)

They still need him to sign those papers. If he's not in the state of California, they can't get his signature, so obviously heading to SFO is another alternative -- although Eduardo _hates_ paying out-of-pocket for flights, it's obscene. Except, what's waiting for him back in Cambridge, anyway, except an empty dorm and a stack of final exam reviews to start filling out? Finals for classes that Eduardo nit-picked with the full intention of creating the best resume possible for graduation, so at least _somebody_ at Facebook would have an impressive degree, and ... well, yeah, that's not going to happen, either.

How can you just _fire_ someone from being CFO with _no_ warning?

How many people were in on this?

How is Eduardo going to tell his parents --

Oh god, no, there's that mental block, that great big blinding _Do Not Want,_ and Eduardo hitches forward involuntarily against the railing like he's trying to get away from it, like the awful inevitability is standing right behind him with a proprietary hand on his shoulder and there is _nowhere to go._

He can't see anything out beyond the edge of the bridge and the pool of lamplight, only the sheen of fog, broken occasionally by the headlights of a passing car, and he feels a little bit like a letter trapped at the end of a line of text -- if he moved just one step forward, he would walk right out of his carefully-constructed sentence into the nothingness of a white blank page. 

Somewhere out in the fog, a seagull calls out confusedly, an echo of a lonely sound.

"Hey!"

The voice is sharp and it comes from directly behind him, loud enough that Eduardo jumps, as alarmed as a cat with a tail that's been trod on.

He spins around, twisting himself up in his own feet and jabbing himself painfully in the side with the railing. For one bright, bell-clear moment, his mind is silenced of everything but a ringing dismay. It's so much easier to stand here and contemplate jumping when no one else is culpable for it, and now there's someone else here to be witness. Even if he convinces them to go on their way, that everything's just fine and so maybe he wanted to take a walk along the Golden Gate Bridge at night in a very nice suit, with eyes as red as apples, and it's perfectly all right ... even then, they're going to wonder. They're going to feel guilty.

And the people Eduardo _wants_ to be plagued with guilt are not here, are not this person.

By the time his eyes have clapped on her, the dismay has passed right into a sharp bloom of relief, settling low in his stomach.

She's a girl, straddling a racing bike and wearing an enormous turquoise windbreaker over black leggings, patched with squares of reflective lenses. She shifts her weight, the bike moving with her, and all he can see of her face from this angle is that she's blonde and has a very large forehead.

Eduardo holds up his hands, palms out. "Look --" he begins.

"No," she cuts in, and swings her leg off the bike, leaving it to lean against the lamp pole. She pushes her hood back, revealing a windswept bun perched on the back of her head and wide, eager grey eyes. "No, you've got the right idea. Let's jump!"

It's as if the cold steals his breath away for a moment. 

"What?" he manages, baffled.

She steps up to him, grabbing hold of his arm and pulling him around so that they're pressed up against the railing again, looking out into the fog. "We all think about it, don't we?" she goes, fixing her eyes on him. Her voice is low, private, like she's got a secret to tell. "There are so many precautions stopping us from getting to the other side -- doesn't it just make you want to give them the middle finger and step out anyway? _Face_ the danger, come on!"

The railing is thick and difficult to get over, designed so that tourists and bicyclists can't accidentally tip over the edge and plummet to their grisly deaths, but she pulls so hard that Eduardo can't dig his feet in fast enough, and then, suddenly and without warning, he is standing on a very narrow beam jutting out over absolutely nothing.

He grips the railing so hard his knuckles are white with strain. Beside him on another beam, the girl slants a smile at him.

(He doesn't know it right now, but her name is Amelia Ritter, and at this moment in time, she is 22 years old and frequently bikes this way at this time of night.)

"We are _so_ close to dying right now, can you feel it?" she goes around a smile full of teeth, and with the hand that isn't holding onto the railing, she outstretches her arm, like a child pretending to be an airplane. Her voice is fervent, saying, "Thank you, I've been wanting to do this for _ages,_ but I've never had the excuse."

"Are you _drunk?"_ Eduardo demands.

Again, that look. "No!" she replies. "Are you?"

"No!"

She pivots on the balls of her feet so that she's facing him, so nonchalantly suspended over the bay that he makes an aborted movement to grab at her wrist, to catch her in case she falls. Today sucks hard enough already, he doesn't need to be responsible for this, too. Her ears and nose are bright red from the cold, and he doubts he looks much better.

"So why are we here?" she wants to know.

Eduardo stares at her. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and then blurts out, "Because you're _crazy_ and dragged me over the railing?"

"But that's what you were going to do anyway," she points out, sounding perfectly reasonable, like this is something she explains all the time. "Won't it be easier to do when somebody else is with you? No, but really --" she cuts above his automatic protest. "Tell me, why are you here?"

"I never --" Eduardo starts, vehement.

"If we're going to jump, I want to know why!" she says very loudly, drowning him out.

"Because I have lost _everything!"_ he screams back at her, torn unbidden from his throat. 

Her mouth snaps shut.

Eduardo's voice comes shuddering out of him, " _Everything._ My company, my future, my friends -- oh, god, my friends. Why didn't anybody _warn_ me?" he wants to curl into a ball, the _ache_ of it is so stunningly acute, and her face creases in pain at the sound of him. "Why didn't anybody try to _stop_ it?"

All this time, Eduardo has been one e-mail, one call, one text message away (isn't that the point of running a networking site -- that distance should be _meaningless,)_ so why didn't Mark or Dustin or Chris or even Ashleigh (who's kind enough to send him updates on who broke what shit in the break room this week and is his unofficial spy, ever since he threatened Sean Parker with castration if he ever told her she had legs like a stairway to heaven ever again,) oh, he doesn't know, bother to _tell_ him that they were plotting to dilute him out of his shares without so much as a whoopsie-daisy?

He shakes his head at that thought, trying to dislodge it.

There's got to be another reason for this.

"I'm not completely gone," he tells her, clinging to this as hopelessly as he's clinging to the railing. "I still own --" _.03%,_ come on, Eduardo, you're not fooling anyone. That's not even enough of a percentage to own a Facebook stapler, "-- a small percentage. I'm still employed. I'm still --"

A number of plans flick their way back and forth across his mind, fast as flashing lights; already, some part of Eduardo is thinking about how he's going to go back to Facebook and apologize for his behavior, then sit down with Mark (who will probably need something for a hangover, remember that, Eduardo, a million members, congratulations, man,) and calmly ask for an explanation. They need to discuss those papers that Eduardo hasn't signed, and they need to discuss what Eduardo has to do to be let back into the fold.

Until he signs those papers, he still has his original 34%. He can still fix this; if Mark truly wanted Eduardo gone, he would have just fired him -- a CEO can do that, and god knows Mark wouldn't hesitate. 

So there's got to be something to the dilution. Something Eduardo hasn't seen yet.

(Something that will appease that tiny, cold little voice in the back of his mind, whispering, _you know you saw this coming. You know you did. Why else would you have gone straight to Mark? Why didn't you attack Sean, why didn't you attack that lawyer, why didn't you go yell at the finance office? You want to know why you went straight for his throat? Because deep down, you know Mark's responsible. This is what you've been afraid of all along.)_

(How long has he been planning this?)

He becomes aware that he's making a noise -- some high, hysterical keen in the back of his throat, and whatever's all over his face, it makes the girl reach out for him.

"Hey," she goes, from very far off, her voice no louder than the hum of a very badly tuned radio. "Hey, hey, there."

(How long? Think back, Eduardo. Do you think he started planning this when you returned to Harvard to start your senior year, instead of staying in California? Or earlier, when you froze the existing lines of credit to your bank account? Or earlier, with the fucking chicken? Or earlier, when Sean said, _you must be Mark?_ Or, or, or ... or even earlier than that, when you stood in front of him and you said, breathless and shaking with it, _hey, hey, guess what? I got punched by the Phoenix,_ like that was the be all, end all, like for some reason your stupid young self thought it was going to be more fucking important than what Mark was about to tell you?)

(Is this your punishment?)

(White blank page, Eduardo, the fog and the sea. There's nothing stopping you.)

(And who needs you, really?)

" _Wait!"_ Her voice is as high and shrill as the cry of a gull, both her hands on Eduardo now, and the moment he realizes this, feels the knots of her knuckles pressing against him through his suit jacket, Eduardo twists, securing an arm around her and hooking the other around the railing, because her grip on him is the only thing keeping her from falling. 

They teeter precariously a moment, shoes skidding on the beams, but Eduardo rights them, pressing up close against the railing, like birds huddled against a wind.

"Wait, just wait," she says again, so near that all he can hear is her voice and the vinyl sounds of her windbreaker as she shifts in place. "Wait. Before we jump, there are two things you should know."

"How important can it be?" Eduardo asks, tone gone cutting with fear and impatience.

"Very!" she goes desperately. "The kind of thing you can't die without knowing!"

"I very sincerely doubt you're the leading expert. People don't go around with an In Case of Death, Say These Things placard on them."

"Stop." Her palm presses flat against his mouth. She's wearing biking gloves, and her hand smells like pleather. "Listen to me. The first thing you need to know is that the water under the Golden Gate is _freezing_ cold. And the second --" she twists sideways, sliding out from under his arm and then she's back on the bridge, behind the railing, standing safe on the pedestrian walkway. She beckons. "The second is that you shouldn't die until you know what it's like to kiss me."

Eduardo's chin jerks to face her. "What?" he goes.

Her mouth curves. "Death can wait." She curls her finger, like a fish on a hook. "Come here and kiss me, just a few heartbeats longer."

He licks his lips, instinctive and unable to help the way his eyes drop to her mouth at the invitation. It's weird, it's maybe the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him, but already his brain is saying, _why not. You have nothing left, so why not have this?_ And then it seems perfectly plausible. (Die with the taste of a woman on your lips. There are worse ways to go, Eduardo.)

He climbs back over the railing, slower than he'd like, stiff from adrenaline and cold. His shoes land on solid concrete again. A car goes by, but it's on the other side of the median, too far to even catch them in the pool of its headlights.

He comes to stand in front of her, and she tilts her head up. "That's it," she says. Her face is round, soft, and most of what he can see of it is forehead, but that's okay.

(What he doesn't know is that in this moment, Amelia Ritter is more terrified than she's ever been in her entire life.)

"I-I'm sorry," he manages. "But I don't think I'm the type of guy to kiss a girl without knowing her name."

She laughs at that, a little too loud. "That's okay, I'm exactly that kind of guy," she goes, with a forced kind of airiness. Then, softer, "My name's Amy."

"Hi, Amy," says Eduardo. "My name's Eduardo."

"Nice to meet you," she murmurs, polite.

Her mouth, when he tilts his head down to it, is so warm it's physically painful.

 

-

They walk her bike back to the San Francisco side of the bridge, and then she takes him home to an apartment way down in the south side.

Much, much later, when Eduardo is a lot older, wheeled out to get some sunshine like he's a potted plant and not a man still in possession of his full faculty, thank you, someone will ask him -- as people always inevitably do -- what the worst moment of his life was. And Eduardo won't think about that night in the hallway of the Webster Street house, dripping wet and his eyes stinging, and he won't think about being escorted from the Facebook premises and he won't think about the depositions and the way people whispered behind his back for years to come.

Instead, he'll think of this: this is the moment his window of opportunity closed. Everyone's familiar with it -- it's the moment after you decide not to kill yourself, when you have to live with the consequences of that, same as you must live with all your consequences, because it's not like your problems have gone away in the meantime. The worst moment of his life wasn't the bridge; it was the hours after the bridge.

Finally, finally, the last shred of strength leaves him, and Eduardo breaks down.

Even in the telling, many years later, it doesn't become romantic, or sadly poetic, or anything but what it is: horrible, and awful, and the worst kind of lonely. What he goes through right then is the kind of feeling he'd never wish on anyone.

He cries until the back of his throat is sore and he's sucked back so much snot his stomach actually feels full, and then he cries until he throws that up and feels empty again. The cuffs of his dress shirt are soaked through, runny with the effort of not getting snot on the pillow and blanket Amy lent him. He feels too gross, too disgusting, like he needs to shed his skin and get a new one just to survive.

Amy's asleep in her room, but she's left the door open so that Eduardo can hear her moving, twisting around in her down comforter and mumbling in her sleep. It's enough, just to know that she's right there.

He wanders into her kitchenette area around dawn, a low, shifty kind of guilt settling in the pit of his stomach. He's disrupted her routine and taken over her apartment without ever really asking permission-- and yeah, no, the self-loathing probably isn't going to go away anytime soon, he's going to have to learn to work around that -- and it's a vague impulse: the girl saved your life, be a gentleman and cook the girl some breakfast.

Eduardo, however, has no clue where anything in her kitchen is, or even when Amy wakes up usually so he can have breakfast ready for her, and even if he did, the list of dishes he can safely and competently prepare consists of maybe three items.

He checks her cupboards. He checks her fridge. She's got magnets from Monterey Bay and Stanford Federal Credit Union and Yosemite National Park, which pin up photographs of smiling girls, arms looped around each other to fit into their photographs.

"Okay," he goes, swallowing around the nostalgia. "Untraditional it is."

 

-

"What, no pancakes?" says Amy from the doorway, leaning her hip against it. "Mmm, waking up to the smell of meatballs and ... is that basil? You sure do know how to win a girl over, Eduardo."

Eduardo puts his back to the stove, lifting his shoulders up around his ears sheepishly. "I thought about making pancakes, but ... I don't know actually know how," he confesses, and then the timer on his phone beeps and he hauls the pot off the burner, dumping the steaming noodles into a strainer. When he looks back, she spares him a tolerant smile and pads over, stretching over his head to pull a pair of bowls down from the highest cabinet -- ceramic, arts-faire types, with a chain of sunflowers stretching along their lips.

"Spaghetti it is," she goes, handing him one. Her eyes are warm, crinkled in the corners. "You pass."

This.

This is Amelia Ritter. At this moment in time, she is 22 years old, and she's not scared at all.

Her favorite things in the world are: reliving her childhood through Disney movies; the satisfaction that comes with sitting down to take an exam, armed with a number two pencil and the calm, centered feeling of being _prepared;_ and pouring milk into a cup of coffee as she stirs it, just to see the swirl bloom.

Her least favorite things in the world are: when her nail polish chips the same day she paints them; getting her earbuds yanked out when the cord becomes tangled in something completely random; and platitudes like, "just be yourself and don't care what anyone thinks of you," because if anybody _knew_ who they were or how to stop caring, they'd have done it already, thanks.

She lives in an apartment with a cost she doesn't think about, with floorboards that creak with every step and assorted items she's become too attached to, in lieu of making meaningful friendships and keeping those instead.

Her greatest fear is the sound of breaking glass, left over from a car accident when she was eight. She's afraid, too, of the smell of open containers of alcohol and headlights when they get too close, but it's the soft, bell-like sound of breaking glass that takes her right back; a little girl with buck teeth and a burgundy-colored leotard, brushing shards of windshield out of her hair and watching her mother shriek with laughter, waving her arm around, going, "look, Amelia, sweetie, look!" as it flopped back and forth, broken bone jutting out of her skin like a door hinge.

Amy's tried hard to block it out and her mother is thirteen years sober.

It's the closest she's ever felt, she thinks, to the way Eduardo felt on the bridge.

She's never thought about suicide beyond the way most people contemplate it -- questions like, who would miss her first? Who would tell her friends and how would they phrase it? Would it be painless, quick, if she just jerked the steering wheel the slightest bit, right into oncoming traffic?

"What are you going to do?" she asks, pinning a meatball against the side of her bowl with her fork and twirling noodles around it.

Sitting cross-legged beside her, Eduardo chews thoughtfully. He's off the bridge, he's made a meal: he's come pretty far, all things considered, and there's nowhere to go but forward.

"Do you know how to make pancakes?" he asks, because that feels like something he should know how to do at some point in his life. (It gets little to no fanfare, but there it is, the biggest victory yet: Eduardo is thinking in the long-term again.)

"Yes!" she smiles. "By which I mean, Google does, so let's ask."

 

-

When he gets back to his dorm on the Harvard campus, there's snow on the ground that wasn't there before he left. He finds a package slip in his mailbox, and, curious, he takes it down to the front desk.

It turns out to be an enormous flower display, long lily tongues and sprays of small white, blue, and yellow flowers he doesn't recognize, all springing out of a white wicker basket. It looks a lot like the sympathy arrangements you'd find lining a coffin at wakes. The bewildered RA hands him a card; plain stationary and no note, just Sean Parker's signature.

Eduardo smiles to himself. He thanks the RA, shouldering the basket and heading up the stairs.

Sean is trying to piss him off. Sean is _still_ trying to piss him off, with the same shit-eating, adolescent vitriol he usually reserves for Mitchell Manningham and the Case Equity guys. Truth be told, it makes Eduardo feel rather pleased with himself: it's nice, after all, to receive the acknowledgement that if you're not going to be a friend, at least you're still a threat.

 

 

-

**_Recipe 2_**

**2\. beef and broccoli stirfry**   
_Technically, "stirfry" is the Americanized blanket term for the Chinese cooking technique, similar to flash frying or sautéing. For the inexperienced chef, stirfry will probably be most helpful in the summer, since the actual cooking part happens very quickly -- you won't have time to heat up the kitchen, which in turn will save on cooling costs. Stirfry is versatile and can be modified to taste and preference._

_**1.** while heating oil up in a pan, slice your meat of choice and your vegetables of choice. to test whether the oil is ready, wet your fingers and flick at the pan. if the oil "pops," it's ready.  
 **2.** add meat and sauce of choice: two to three tablespoons of terriyaki and a dash of sesame oil, for example. stir.  
 **3.** when meat is cooked thoroughly, add the vegetables.  
 **4.** stir, turn off heat.  
 **5.** serve._

 

 

The weeks pass, same as they had before Eduardo even left. The snow on the ground turns to slush, runs into the gutters, and new snow falls.

Finally, when he's no longer able to put off _doing_ something, he goes to meet his best friend at the caf for lunch. Trevor's in his first year as a graduate student and hangs out with too many kids from Harvard Law; he got his bachelor's in special education, and last year he got punched by the Phoenix, same as Eduardo, because his uncle rode in the Tour de France next to Lance Armstrong, and that was the year the Phoenix Club was trying on diversity to see how it fit. 

(Trevor didn't last past hazing, though -- he got caught trying to buy a new chicken after his first one escaped and got hit by a bike messenger.)

At this moment in time, Trevor is 22 years old. His favorite thing in the world is the start-up jingle of his Macbook. His least favorite thing in the world is when girls shave their thighs or pubic hair -- he hates getting stubble burn from cunningulus, but he does it anyway because it's polite and what a woman does with her body has absolutely nothing to do with him, but if you're going to talk about it like a preference on ice cream flavors, he really does prefer bush to not.

He has a weak chin and he inherited his mother's dark head of hair, and he's of the firm belief that if you like the human race, you're probably doing it wrong.

"Hey, guys," Eduardo goes, setting his tray down at the end of the table and bumping fists with Trevor in greeting. "I got a hypothetical situation for you and I want your legal expertise."

"Shit," says one of the girls good-naturedly. "I knew this 'most prestigious law school in the world' thing was going to come and bite us in the butt. Like, actual people asking for advice? Ugh, ugh, make it stop."

Trevor puts his fork down, adopting an air of wide-eyed listening and saying gamely, "Hit us with it, Thork." (The Phoenix nicknamed Eduardo that for reasons nobody bothered to explain to Eduardo himself, which strikes him as kind of unfair, having a name and no choice in it.)

So he picks at his ziti and gives them him the abridged, cliff-notes version of his situation with Facebook. The future lawyers of America listen, making exaggerated gasps of horror at certain parts, like a battle of stock percentages is equatable to tying a damsel to the railroad tracks while dastardly twirling one's mustache.

He's not sure if he's fooling anyone with the hypothetical story, especially since, when he finishes and spreads his hands in question, Trevor pipes up. 

"Wow," he says. "He really stabbed you in the back, didn't he?"

And Eduardo, who's never heard it said like that before, sits up straighter and nods, because that _is_ a fairly accurate description of what went down, wasn't it?

The girl who spoke before exchanges a long look with the Trevor and then offers, "Have you talked to your real lawyers about it?"

"I ..." he starts. "They _were_ my lawyers. I don't have my own, no."

"Do that," she goes, and smiles at him sadly. "You should really do that."

 

-

**amelie_poulain**  
(20:45) Eduardo?  
(20:45) Hello?

 

**save-r-in**  
(20:46) Hey!

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(20:46) !!!  
(20:46) oh good.  
(20:48) btw, just checking because i don't want to believe it's your handwriting. are you really using an @aol.com e-mail address?

 

**save-r-in**  
(20:48) ... yes?  
(20:48) Why do I get the feeling you're suddenly and irrevocably disappointed in all my life decisions?

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(20:48) are you fucking kidding me?  
(20:48) AOL  
(20:48) AOL  
(20:48) why can't i make this font bigger to express my FEELINGS  
(20:48) Eduardo, we live in 2004, why the hell are you still using AOL?  
(20:49) ugh come back to my side of the country so i can whack you with a rolled-up newspaper  
(20:49) just. no.

 

**save-r-in**  
(20:50) If it restores your faith in me, any, usually I give out my @harvard.edu address.  
(20:50) The AOL account is just for fun.  
(20:50) Would the Harvard e-mail address impress you more? :)

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(20:51) well as long as you're not giving the AOL one to anybody you REALLY want to impress.  
(20:51) just. let me send you an invite to Google Mail.  
(20:51) it's still in beta stages but it will make me feel so much better and you will look hip.  
(20:52) sorry. Google pride on the west side.

 

**save-r-in**  
(20:52) Haha :)  
(20:53) iIt's fine!

 

Eduardo leans back, the wooden chair creaking under him, and folds his arms. He's smiling, he realizes, although he wasn't sure when he started.

Around him, Widener is quiet, although it's the busy kind of quiet -- people coughing, students sniffling their way through seasonal colds, chairs creaking and laptop keys clacking and the pages of notebooks wearily creaking as they're turned. Three chairs down at Eduardo's table, a freshman who looks like he hasn't changed his shirt since the beginning of the week is slamming through a tome on art history, lips moving as he reads, the skin under his eyes bruised the color of plums.

Eduardo's supposed to be focusing on his final exam review; he's gone through it once, but it doesn't hurt to do it again for practice. For the most part, though, he's given up trying and just taken to people-watching.

The cursor at the bottom of the IM window blinks, so Eduardo sits up and puts his fingers to the keys.

 

**save-r-in**  
(20:56) How've you been, Amy?  
(20:57) How's o-chem?

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(21:00) ugh  
(21:00) do you think i'd get in trouble if I greased the flight of stairs in gilbert hall and casually shoved my professor down them?

 

-

 

They keep in touch.

Not intentionally, and no thanks to any conscious effort on Eduardo's part -- professionally, he puts all his attention into fostering acquaintances and encouraging cooperation, not friendships, and it's a skill he learned roughly the same time he learned how to tie his shoelaces and that the English language didn't gender differentiate its nouns, which was weird.

Socializing is as easy as breathing, but all of Eduardo's friendships just ... kind of happened by accident.

He and Amy had exchanged information right before he bought himself an out-of-pocket (ugh) airplane ticket back to Cambridge, e-mail and IM addresses like it was the Silicon Valley version of writing your number on somebody's arm. And once one of them sent the first IM, it was just easier to keep on doing it, and they didn't stop.

Eduardo didn't even realize how much of a relief it was, over the winter break, to be able to close his bedroom door and talk to somebody that wouldn't ask him about his progress with the lawyers (like Trevor, who means well, but always manages to remind Eduardo about exactly what he doesn't want to think about at any given time, as best friends sometimes do) or if he met any hot girls and if he passed them up, did he at least get their numbers (like Ricky, who broke up with a long-term girlfriend and is now endeavoring to make her as jealous as possible, which Eduardo knows for a fact isn't working, but antagonism is Ricky's coping method of choice and Eduardo's given up on persuading other people not to make bad life decisions, because pot, kettle, meet the color black.)

His parents' house is, unsurprisingly, a tomb, filled with stiffs who aren't considerate enough to have died yet, so Eduardo spends a lot of time in his room, putting together his personal statement for his grad school applications and evaluating potential programs, leaning back in his chair with a course catalog propped up against the desk edge, looking up every time his IM window flashes.

It's not the happiest winter break he's ever had, but he accomplishes a lot.

It sneaks up on Eduardo, though, until some questionnaire he fills out at the beginning of his last and final semester as a Harvard undergrad asks him if he can name his three closest friends.

Amy is one of the first people that immediately pops into his head, along with Trevor and Ricky (whose real name is Ricardo and who was Eduardo's first friend in Boston -- he DJs the graveyard shift on the Portuguese radio station and always likes to greet Eduardo with something nonsensical and not-quite suggestive, like, _hey, you dirty today, Eduardo? Yeah, you really dirty? I know you're dirty, wanna know how? ... Because you're a businessman, ha!_ And always makes Eduardo laugh and say, _yeah, watch out!_ because Ricky just inspires enthusiasm.)

He feels weird about it for maybe five minutes, because in terms of how he views his social circle, it's kind of a colossal shift.

And then he gets over it.

Because. Whatever, they're quality people.

 

-

In the middle of July, 2005, when Eduardo's almost a month into his new lease, Chris sends him a flight itinerary and an electronic attendance ticket to Stanford's summer commencement, which falls in August.

To say that it comes as a surprise is something of an understatement, because Chris and Eduardo were supposed to toss their caps together in May and stoically endure Gatorade baths, courtesy of AEPi, but Chris transfered out to Stanford and spent an extra semester playing catch-up, so Eduardo graduated in May without him. It hadn't been hard to let Chris drift away, because everything was in upheaval and it'd been self-preservation on Eduardo's part, just to let some things fall into the fissure.

He squints at the screen for several long moments, surprised and suspicious and touched all in turns.

He opens a reply form and types, _Dude. Why did you pay for my plane ticket?_ Which seems a safe thing to ask, because while Eduardo made $300,000 in one summer, it doesn't mean he's used to having the kind of friends who can just purchase airline tickets off the cuff.

Chris replies right before Eduardo leaves for work.

_They are going to throw me a graduation party. Please don't leave me alone with these people, man, I'm too young to die,_ if that tells you anything about how lucrative Facebook is without having really changed at all.

In all honesty, if everything hadn't already been arranged for him -- short of physically manhandling him onto the plane -- Eduardo probably would have found an excuse not to go, and wouldn't even have felt that guilty about it. But making an excuse would put Chris out of the cost of airfare, and it wasn't the type of invitation that would come twice, so Eduardo steels himself, RSVPs to the commencement ceremony, and IMs Amy.

 

**save-r-in**  
(13:11) What would you say if I told you that next month, I might possibly be in your neck of the woods again?

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(13:12) !!!  
(13:12) *GASP*  
(13:12) HOLY SHIT  
(13:12) THIS IS MOST EXCELLENT  
(13:12) MY COUCH IS AT YOUR SERVICE. i think it misses you. it pines.  
(13:12) wait wait omg when exactly?

 

**save-r-in**  
(13:12) Uh.  
(13:13) August 16, 17, and 18.

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(13:13) No fucking way.  
(13:13) dude  
(13:13) dude  
(13:13) dude  
(13:13) omg  
(13:14) um, this is kind of a weird request, but would you like to be my plus-one to this self-congratulatory event at Oracle on the 16th? it's going to be full of all these dot-commers talking about the good old days when Windows 95 was flying off the shelf and i need someone my age to hang out with at the bar so that i don't die of boredom.

 

**save-r-in**  
(13:17) I would love to.  
(13:18) It's the least I can do, if I'm going to set up camp on your poor couch.

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(13:18) YUSSSSSSSS.  
(13:18) we can sit around and jadedly complain about networking.  
(13:18) we'll fit right in!

 

**save-r-in**  
(13:19) :)  
(13:19) In that case, do you want to be my plus-one to a graduation party on the 17th?

 

**amelie_poulain**  
(13:19) i can do that, certainly.  
(13:19) THIS IS SO EXCITING.  
(13:19) OMG  
(13:20) YOU AND YOUR PRETTY FACE IS COMING HEEEEEEEEERE.  
(13:20) august, come sooner!

 

-

Eduardo is expecting everyone at the Oracle party to closely resemble the people he works with on a daily basis -- his father's generation, mingling with some dot-com whizzes and the people who invested in them early and got the payout. When she was persuading him to go, Amy made it sound like it was going to be a geriatric get together, where everyone wore sweater sets and talked about their hip replacements.

He and Amy stick close to each other at first, making slow circles around the conference tables in the hotel ballroom. She's wearing earrings as bright and silvery as chandeliers, and a green-blue dress that wraps around her figure like a mermaid's tail, and it catches at the light whenever she stretches up to put her mouth to his ear, whispering the big names to him ("and that's Larry, the Oracle himself. He pre-games, though, and he's handsy, but don't worry, I'll protect you if he tries to grope you.")

Shortly after escaping a conversation with a Linux enthusiast with really long nose hair, he turns to her and says admiringly, "You're like a Silicon Valley tour guide."

She lifts a shoulder, modest. "The amount of useless information I manage to keep in my brain boggles even me sometimes. Would you like to know who founded Napster? I can't remember my social security number half the time, but I somehow can pull that off the top of my head even when hungover and groggy."

"Oh, trust me," he says, droll. "I'm acquainted with that one." 

"My social security number?"

" _No!_ You -- you know what, shh, let's just steal a plate of food and hide in the coat closet until something happens. I feel way too young for this crowd."

"You have the best plans, Eduardo."

During the main event, Oracle's president calls on Amy by name during his speech to acknowledge her for her hard work, so she has to stand up and awkwardly receive applause. Afterwards, people keep catching her to ask her questions, so Eduardo uses the opportunity to cut across the room, heading for the restroom signs in the back.

Which is when, for the first time tonight, somebody sees _him._

Up against the wall, strategically located between a potted ficus tree and the exit, is a man wearing what looks like his grandfather's tweed suit jacket over a pair of blue jeans, the hems of which are frayed from being walked on. A glass dangles from his fingers, the contents of which were drained so quickly that the head is still a foamy remnant at the bottom.

This is Mark Zuckerberg, and at this moment, he is 21 years old.

His favorite things in the world are: the satisfaction of being right, waking up to the sight of a girl wearing one of his sweatshirts, and touching his fingertips to the bits of braille on the "in case of emergency" signs in elevators.

His least favorite things in the world can be listed alphabetically or categorically, and at this moment happen to include everything about this situation.

"Eduardo," he goes, straightening his shoulders and giving him a slow, acknowledging nod of his chin.

"Mark," Eduardo returns, and thinks about continuining on his way, but it's been a good night and with that surging, philanthropic thought, he checks his momentum and turns around, putting his shoulders back against the wall so they're standing side-by-side. That way, Mark can study the toes of his sneakers and Eduardo doesn't have to meet his eyes. He stuffs his hands in his pockets; they're tailored to fit, so his knuckles stand out through the fabric, showing how tightly his hands are balled into fists.

"I didn't realize Oracle had much to do with Facebook," he comments by way of greeting.

Mark shrugs one shoulder. "I didn't either," he says, blithe. And then, "I saw who you came in with. How is she?"

It's an odd way to phrase the question; most people would have said _who is she_ and not _how is she_ like they were already acquainted and he's reminding himself that she actually exists, (or, since this is Mark he's talking about, like she's something that can be sampled to taste, like _how is this wine)_ but a combination of having expected to be asked the question and being used to Mark's conversational faux pas makes Eduardo overlook the word choice and he answers, "That's Amy. She's a Stanford student and one of the guests of honor."

Mark gives him a strange look. His next question comes out stilted, like he's prompting himself. "How did you meet?"

It could almost count as polite, if it were anybody else, but it smacks too much of _so how's the internship, how's Christy._ The sound of it hits Eduardo so suddenly he doesn't know what to do, an abrupt up-flush of feeling, starting in his heart and thudding hard all the way to his brain, both rash and ferocious in turns. 

He bares his teeth and hears himself reply, "On the Golden Gate Bridge," because Mark walked right into that one. "On the night of the ambush -- although I suppose you would remember it as the millionth member party. I tried to jump. She stopped me."

In that moment, Mark's face does a very unique thing -- it starts to crumple, his mouth and the lines of his eyes folding inwards like they'd received a blow, and then it just freezes, like Mark caught that feeling and shut it away somewhere small, and dark, and lonely, where he puts all the things that hurt him. He tilts his chin up, an oddly defiant motion for someone wearing a too-large suit jacket, not unlike a schoolchild facing down a bully. As if Eduardo has _any_ power in this relationship: they've proved that one quite thoroughly.

Eduardo immediately feels ridiculous, standing there while his heart pounds painfully fast. 

What is he _doing?_

What cheap thrill can he get out of hurting someone he once called a friend, purely out of spite? The satisfaction certainly isn't worth it, not like this, letting himself wield the worst moment of his life as a weapon.

He threatened Mark with lawyers and lawyers is what Mark will get, not this.

Eduardo, who is keenly humiliated by things like saying the wrong thing in a business meeting and feeding bits of chicken to a chicken, has actually come to sit comfortably with the fact that he tried to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge when he was twenty-one years old and was stopped by a girl with the promise of a kiss. Everyone should have the chance for one more kiss before they go. He's not embarrassed by it, but he _is_ embarrassed by having just tried to make someone else feel that same hurt, no matter how human the impulse felt.

He shifts his weight along the wall, like he's going in to bump Mark's shoulder with his own. Nothing gets Mark's attention faster than the threat of physical contact.

"Protip," says Eduardo, keeping his voice low like he's sharing something confidential. "Don't do it at night."

Mark's brows knit in the center of his forehead. "Don't do what?" he goes blankly, and then his eyelids flicker. "Suicide?"

"Yes," says Eduardo. "It's horrible, there's nothing to look at. Just, like," he waves a hand around vaguely. "Fog. If you're going to jump, do it in the daytime, in the sunlight. That way you can at least look at something beautiful."

He watches the rapid twitch of Mark's eyes as they try to decide which one of Eduardo's they're going to focus on, like it's absolutely necessary he keep Eduardo in his line of sight. He looks unsettled, and weirdly captivated, like Eduardo could do anything right now and Mark wouldn't look away. Eduardo isn't so caught up in the moment that he can't acknowledge this is exactly what he would have wanted, a year or so ago; Mark's undivided attention.

"Thank you," Mark says eventually, a beat too late, his voice so flat you could probably sail right off the edge. "I'll keep that in mind, the next time I'm feeling selfish and overwhelmed by the shallow vapidity of my life and want to end it all."

And there's Mark's defense mechanism; the caustic, corrosive sarcasm of someone who's never been in a similar situation and has no sensitivity to it. 

Eduardo smiles, wry. "Or you make sure there's someone like Amy around who knows exactly what to say to get you to turn around and face what's coming," he says, lifting his eyes and automatically scanning the room for sight of Amy's shimmering, fishscale-green dress, the same way people compulsively check their phones when they're in an awkward situation.

Mark makes a noise in the back of his throat. He lifts the glass in his hand, and apparently remembers there's nothing in it, because he lowers it again, tapping the bottom against his thigh.

Eduardo cranes his neck to see to the other side of the ballroom, and almost misses it when Mark asks, "Why is she your plus-one?"

"She .. what?" he manages absently. And, "oh, no! I'm her plus-one. And her boyfriend. Maybe," he corrects himself. "I should really talk to her about that one."

He doesn't know why he says it. The boyfriend thing, but Eduardo can pick up on context clues and is pretty sure Amy already has one, and it's not him. The words just come out.

Mark's face does another very curious thing. At first, Eduardo thinks it's the look of any adolescent boy who's just found out that his friend found a girlfriend while he still doesn't have one -- everyone knows what that's like, and Eduardo doesn't want to call attention to it because it's rude, but the expression isn't quite right. It's more than kneejerk jealousy, it's almost ... confusion.

"Are you really," Mark says, completely toneless.

There she is -- a cluster of tech-nerds in expensive glasses finally disperse from the huddle they'd made around somebody's phone, and Eduardo catches sight of Amy. She's smiling a little forcedly at the man talking to her, someone who's easily old enough to be her father and Eduardo's, too. Since this is why people came up with the idea of plus-ones in the first place, Eduardo pushes himself away from the wall and goes to rescue her, leaving Mark behind without a second thought.

Amy spares him a smile of undisguised relief. He slips an arm around her waist, fingertips catching along the seam of her dress and holding as he turns to the man (who, he'll find out later, is one of the execs from Amazon -- this place, seriously,) fixing a polite smile to his face.

She leans into the touch, and the want stabs very suddenly at the soft, dark space behind Eduardo's heart -- he really, very much wants to be Amelia Ritter's boyfriend.

 

-

An hour or so later, it becomes obvious that the event is winding down for the evening -- people are making their excuses and slipping out the door, the women pulling their shawls up high around their necks to protect themselves against the late-night Bay Area chill. Most everybody walks a little unevenly, because this is an Oracle get-together and no expenses were spared on the open bar.

"This had better fill my socialization quota for the next _year,"_ Amy mutters, pillowing her head in her arms, her words muffled and directed at the white tablecloth.

"I take it you're ready to leave," Eduardo goes, diplomatic.

"Yes, please," she goes fervently, pushing herself to her feet.

Sleepily covering her yawn with the back of her hand, she walks off to go fetch her jacket from the coat-check people, so Eduardo waits for her right inside the doors in the lobby, studying the crimson-colored pattern in the carpet. He wonders if anyone's ever compared and contrasted the patterns of hotel carpets, because some of them are truly atrocious.

He's still standing there when the door carousels, and then a very familiar face materializes on the other side, coming through.

Eduardo's heart makes a startled, valiant leap inside his chest, and he straightens, blurting out without thinking, "Dustin!"

And it is. It is! Thin and ungainly, Dustin spins around. 

He looks incredibly underdressed for the venue, wearing a soft-looking shirt with the caption "Dinosaurs Eat Man, Woman Inherits the Earth" and Birkenstocks with the buckles worn down into grooves. He freezes at the sight of Eduardo, his eyes going very, very round.

"What are you _doing_ here?" Eduardo demands, disbelieving.

"I'm the designated driver," Dustin replies, as if by rote, holding up a set of car keys that dangle off the end of his finger, and of course -- there's an open bar, and Dustin isn't even twenty-one yet, so he wouldn't have been invited, no matter his position within Facebook itself. Eduardo forgets, sometimes, that even people like Mark and Dustin (occasionally) have to abide by the rest of the world's rules.

Eduardo shakes his head in wonder, and Dustin shifts his weight to one side, wavering.

The uncertainty on his face sends a sharp (and familiar) sting of guilt lancing right through Eduardo's heart -- he's been so absorbed in the mess with Mark and how to behave that he hasn't even spared a single thought for Dustin, whom he hasn't seen since before they ambushed him with the dilution. It just ... same as it had been with Chris, it just hadn't seemed _important,_ trying to salvage this friendship when he'd lost everything else, and now that he's got Dustin here, in front of him, Eduardo can acknowledge just how much of a stupid mistake that was.

Dustin sidles up to him, like he's going to go in for some kind of bro-nudge gesture of hello, friendly but so very casual, careful in a way Eduardo isn't used to.

He doesn't even think: he opens his arms for a hug.

Dustin's whole face crumples with relief, and he flings himself into Eduardo's arms with a joy that staggers them both, bumping them against the trash can by the door and almost tripping them, but Eduardo braces his weight and claps Dustin hard on the back, arms lashed around each other. 

He feels Dustin's head roll, burying his face into Eduardo's neck. He holds on, for one long beat, then two, and a little bit longer after that.

"I missed you too, man," Eduardo laughs, and stops waiting for permission to let go, squeezing Dustin hard instead and amending, almost apologetically, "No homo, but I _really_ missed you."

"No, no, no," Dustin protests in a rapid babble, his hands balling into fists in the fabric of Eduardo's jacket, nails and the teeth of his car keys digging in. "Very homo. All the homo. I like the homo, don't stop the homo. Please, homo to your heart's delight -- shut up," he mutters, when Eduardo starts shaking with laughter.

 

-

Dustin has to go ("drunks to chauffeur, life woes to listen to, blackmail material to compile -- all in a day's work," he announces grandly,) so once he confirms that he'll see Eduardo at Chris's tomorrow, he gives a hearty salute and turns around. He starts to walk away, before he pauses and comes running back for another lengthy hug, and then disappears into the bowels of the hotel, leaving Eduardo standing there, feeling warm all the way down to his toes.

"You're smiling," Amy comments when she rejoins him, a question in her voice and a kneejerk answering smile stretching her mouth.

"I saw an old friend," he tells her, and on impulse, pulls her in for a hug, too, just to pass some of the feeling on.

She laughs into the fabric at his shoulder.

The next morning, he wakes up in her apartment to the sound of the floorboards creaking, weary and worn, and cracks an eye open. Amy's by the windowsill, all her weight canted onto one hip, stifling her yawn with the back of her hand and watering a row of plants out of a dirty wineglass. There's a row of lip prints all along the rim, pale pink -- he can see them from here.

He watches her pad back into the kitchen to refill the glass, and the second time she returns, he opens his mouth and hears himself ask, "Would you ever consider being my girlfriend?"

She startles, gaze searching him out amongst the bundle of comforter. When she finds his eyes, holding them with her own, she tilts her head. "Eduardo?" she goes, neither encouraging nor discouraging.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows and licks at his sleep-dry lips.

There's sunlight coming in from behind her, obscuring her features so he can't quite tell what's going on with her expression.

"You saved my life," he says finally.

"No, I didn't," she immediately replies, setting the glass down on the sill and coming over. She sits down in the blankets beside him, close enough that he can see her bare legs are covered in goosebumps. She tucks her hair behind her ear and tells him, firmly, "I didn't. You did that just fine on your own."

He lifts a hand, touching the back of his knuckles to her cheek. She catches his hand between both of hers, giving it a light squeeze.

"All you needed, Eduardo, was to discover that you had the power to save yourself. Everyone does. It's just ... sometimes you forget. And that's all I did. Reminded you."

With his heart feeling too large for his chest, Eduardo waits one beat, then two, waiting for a clue, wanting permission. Amy gives nothing away, but when he stretches his neck up questioningly, she doesn't hesitate before letting her head fall to meet him; her lips brush over his, a barely-there twist of her mouth against his, and his skin lights up with anticipation, the hairs rising all along his arms. He wants this, so much. Eduardo can be a nice boyfriend, and Amelia Ritter deserves all the nice things.

He chases her mouth up.

Her fingers dig into his hair, searching for a hold.

 

-

She drops him off at the CalTrain station with instructions on which stop to get off at (funnily enough, it's the Stanford stop -- Eduardo did get a bachelor's in economics from _Harvard,_ he doesn't know if you've heard of it, it's kind of the most prestigious school in the country, he's pretty sure he could have figured that one out on his own) and about twelve suggestions for rude things to yell through a bullhorn when Chris goes up for his diploma.

"You're a _frat boy,"_ she tells him insistently. "Inappropriate behavior is in your _blood."_

Eduardo's own commencement happened so recently that it gives him a swooping feeling of deja vu, joining Chris's father in the bleachers while the band warms up down on the green. Chris's brother and cousin are there, too -- Eduardo knows them only _just_ well enough to make polite conversation and then get uncomfortable at being the only non-family member there, before they're joined by two people he _does_ know, a brother-sister pair from Harvard's journalism department, where Chris had spent 75% of his free time.

After the ceremony, which involves Chris's cousin sunburning around the collar of his shirt and the tip of his nose and a tally of how many graduates have unfortunate names, Eduardo gets the opportunity to bestow on Chris the same long, bone-crushing hug Dustin had given him the night before, which Chris seems startled by, but pleased, his smile dimpling his cheeks.

"It's been a while," Chris says warmly. "Good to see you, Eduardo."

It's a good, practiced politician's line, and it makes Eduardo grin, because he can see right through it. "I missed you too."

 

-

That night, his and Amy's roles are reversed, and she comes with him to Chris's studio apartment in Menlo Park as his plus-one.

She's chatty on the drive down, one hand on the wheel as they sit in traffic on the 101 and the other gesticulating cheerfully in time with the story she's telling about Stanford, but the closer they get to Chris's address, the quieter and more perplexed she grows.

Parking is shit, of course, because it's nothing but street parking for blocks, and she winds up nestled right under the No Parking sign at the end of the street. Eduardo stretches back to pick up his card and graduation gift from the back seat and gets out of the car, thumbing at his phone one more time to check the apartment number. The invitation promises a good, meaty stirfry; he almost imagines he can smell it from here.

He glances across at Amy, whose lips are pursed, glancing from the apartment building to Eduardo and back again. He can hear her jiggling her keys, like she's nervous.

"Amy?" he goes, the bubble of warmth inside his chest deflating slightly. "Are you all right?"

She looks at him, wets her lips, and then asks, no louder than a whisper. "Chris Hughes? Chris Hughes is _your_ Chris?"

"... Yes? Is that --" 

He breaks off, because her eyes slide shut and she leans against the car. He can't hear it, but he sees her mouth form around a "fuck," and he straightens up, coming around to her side of the car.

"Amy?" he says again, touching her shoulder.

She lifts her chin to meet his eyes, grimacing slightly. "Please don't be mad," she says, and he nods, rapidly, not quite sure why it is he's not supposed to be mad about but needing to reassure her anyway. He slips his hand down to take hers; her fingers are stiff when he wraps his around them, and her spine stays rigid all the way up to the door.

She slips her hand from his just as he rings the buzzer, and turns to him, saying very quickly, "I take that back. Please be mad. Be very mad, but please don't be hurt."

And then the door opens, and Dustin pounces on them from inside the entryway, saying, " _War_ do!" in his faux-sauve way. When he pulls away from a back-slapping hug, his eyes land on Amy and they light up, surprised.

"Hey!" he goes. "I thought you said you had a different graduation party to go to tonight. We weren't expecting you, this is _awesome."_

Still with an arm half-way wound around Eduardo's waist, he leans in to kiss Amy on the mouth.

She doesn't quite flinch, but Eduardo sees the way her eyebrows crunch before smoothing out. She doesn't look at him.

Dustin wraps an arm around her shoulders, grinning from ear to ear.

"Wardo, my man," he says, while Eduardo is still reeling. "Meet my girlfriend."

 

 

-

_**Recipe 3**_

**3\. egg drop soup**   
_American Chinese food is about as far from authentic Chinese as you can get while still incorporating the same tastes and cooking styles. Of all recipes to try at home, egg drop soup is one of the simplest and most versatile; its flavors are only as bland as you want it to be, and it can be served as an appetizer or as a main course -- hot and direct is best, because it doesn't keep very well after serving. Straight-up warm comfort food, it's a perfect dish for cold and flu season._

_**1.** Pour 4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock into a pan and bring to a simmer on medium-high.  
 **2.** OPTIONAL: if you want any flavoring extras, now would be the time to put them in a tea ball or strainer and add them; let simmer for 10 minutes or so and then remove the tea ball. Suggested flavoring extras include: a half-inch of cut ginger, 1/2 teaspoon peppercorn, 1 stem lemongrass, 2 tablespoons miso, or 1 tablespoon soy sauce.  
 **3.** Scoop out 1/4 of the stock and whisk it with 1 tablespoon cornstarch. At this point, you can add extra ingredients to your soup stock: tofu, mushrooms, onions, whatever. Add your cornstarch mixture back into the main stock, and stir. Whisk two to four eggs in your extra bowl with 1 teaspoon cornstarch.  
 **4.** Turn off heat. Take a fork and hold it high above the soup. Pour egg through the tines of the fork, moving in a circle -- this will create a ribbon effect with your eggs. Ideally, you'll stir the soup as you pour, but that's too difficult unless you happen to have three hands. Be sure to stir immediately; slowly and carefully and always in the same direction.  
 **5.** Top with cut scallions and serve._

 

This is Dustin Moskovitz.

At this moment in time, he is twenty years old. He buys all of his shirts from Threadless and he's never had a fake ID -- he can't lie worth beans, and guilt shines through on his face like bird shit on a windshield, so there was really no point, especially not when it was so easy to get other people to buy beer for him -- and his actual driver's license says his eyes are grey, because he checked the wrong box on accident while filling out the form. They are, in fact, a very dark brown.

His favorite things in the world are: the instant oatmeal packets that come with Did You Knows about dinosaurs, quiet afternoons with nothing pressing to do except look at cat macros, and McDonalds Mighty Kids Meals.

There aren't a lot of things he dislikes, but. The one thing he hates above all other things (excluding, of course, rapists and people who cut other people off in traffic without signaling, for whom not even _Dante_ could even create a level of hell deep enough) are guys who tell crude stories about their girlfriends for a laugh, like somehow girls aren't the most amazing thing ever put on this earth.

Right now, he is incredibly nervous, bouncing his leg underneath the formica tabletop in a tic he's unable to control.

Awkwardness seems to have become the permanent fourth phantom at their table: there'd been an incredibly pointed moment earlier, when they tried to figure out the politics of who was going to sit next to who and what kind of message it would send. Wordlessly, they'd shuffled around each other so that Eduardo and Dustin sat together on one side of the booth, Amy across from them, an independent element all her own; the overenthusiastic air conditioning makes her shiver, and she scoots further down the booth to get out from under the vent.

Eduardo wants to unzip his jacket and hand it over to her, but he doesn't know if he's allowed. Should Dustin do it, because Dustin is Amy's boyfriend, or should he do it, because he's her date?

The buzzing sign on the door of the Chinese restaurant advertises that it's open until 1am. The only other customers here sit on the other side of the room, by the drink fountain; a man and a woman in khakis and polos with "Google" etched onto the breast, trading words back and forth in a comfortable slipstream. Eduardo fidgets in his seat, folding down the corner of his paper napkin and then smoothing it flat again.

At his elbow, Dustin picks up a clementine from the complimentary bowl at the end of the table, and starts to peel it.

He's horrible at it. It comes off inexpertly, in little chunks, like he's picking at a stubborn price sticker on a new piece of dishware. Amy -- who's a Cali girl and has been able to peel a clementine in one unbroken reel since the age of seven -- and Eduardo -- who knows tropical fruit the way Peter Jackson might know complimentary greetings in Elvish -- go still and watch him, amused. The smell of citrus wafts up from Dustin's digging thumbs.

"I can feel you judging me," he says without looking up.

"It's like watching a little kid try to tie his shoelaces," Eduardo replies, kneejerk, because it's always been easiest to banter with Dustin than it ever was to just sit in silence with him: he makes everyone feel better just by being around him. "Hilarious in an inept kind of way."

"So totally judging," Dustin confirms. "Judging is bad for your health, you should stop that." He manages to get all of the peel off, and immediately breaks it into quarters. "Want a slice?"

They pass the clementine between them. The erratic bouncing of Dustin's leg is making the whole bench quiver.

It hadn't taken much conversation to persuade them to do this on neutral ground, instead of in the tiny, cramped, celebratory space of Chris's Menlo Park studio. Eduardo had dropped off his card and his graduation gift, clapped Chris on the shoulder while he was deep in conversation with a small, thoughtful-looking group of people all dressed in knit caps with hemp satchels over their shoulders, and then exited right back into the brisk, chilly Bay Area night. Dustin directed them here, saying they had the best soup this far inland from the coast.

The girl who took their orders when they came in is sitting behind the counter, feet tucked up underneath her thighs. She twirls a pen around in a dance across her knuckles, enormous textbook propped open on her lap. From this distance, Eduardo can't tell what she's studying; anything from o-chem to economics to world history, high school to college level to graduate student. She could be any one of these things.

From the back, the cook yells something. She yells back without lifting her eyes, completely unperturbed.

Out of the three of them, Eduardo has the most practice confronting awkward situations, so eventually, he's the one who takes a deep breath, sitting up and squaring his shoulders in order to say to Amy, "You know what I find most ironic about this whole thing?" He spreads his hands open. "That out of all the people in the whole world you could have met without them being aware of each other, and it was _us."_

She tilts her head at that, brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. It just tumbles loose again.

"Now that I'm unraveling everything backwards," she returns, addressing her hands as they spread out the cutlery on her placemat, which is covered with factoids about the Chinese horoscope. "It really isn't that surprising."

"How ..." starts Eduardo, and then picks one of the hundreds of questions swirling around inside his skull. "How did you two meet?"

She does meet his eyes then, saying solemnly, "Same way I met you," and Dustin answers simultaneously with a chorus of: "She sent me flowers!"

It takes a moment for the implications of both remarks to sink in, and when it does, Eduardo double-takes, rocking back in his seat a little bit, because it really does feel like this information has skewed the whole planet just a few inches to the left. Dumbfounded and a little lost, he stares at Amy, and neither of them look at Dustin when she amends, impassive, "Dustin and I remember the chronology of the events a little differently."

"I can see that," Eduardo manages.

Dustin side-eyes him, a frown beginning between his brows. "Same way ..." he echoes, confused. "Wait. When were you in the hospital here?"

"It really isn't that surprising," Amy repeats, before Eduardo can answer him. "I would have met you eventually, I think. Birds of a feather and all of that."

"Hey," Dustin pokes at Eduardo's shoulder demandingly. "When were you in --"

"I wasn't," Eduardo answers, turning to face him at last. "In the hospital, I mean. I was ..." he falters, only managing another heartbeat of eye contact before he diverts his gaze, rubbing at the heels of his hands with his thumbs. Suddenly, it's like it's too hard to say: it hadn't been hard telling Mark, not at all, using the information to twist the knife, but it's different with Dustin. With Dustin, he feels like he needs to protect him from the truth, which curdles inside his chest, feeling a lot like the hot, initial spikes of shame that had plagued him in the days following the night he was diluted out.

Dustin's opinion _matters,_ which is why he doesn't think he can be honest, and it's a horrible thing to feel.

Amy takes pity on him, and explains in an abridged way, "I took a jog and met him on the bridge."

"The bridge?" Dustin echoes.

"The big one," Amy adds, drier. "The landmark. Red. Hard to miss."

"She saved my life," Eduardo confesses, murmuring now.

"I did not," she replies by rote, just as quiet.

He flashes her a brief smile, and she smiles back, and just as Dustin is tracking the progress of that smile, eyes sliding from one of them to the other with the comprehension close by not quite there, Eduardo shoulders up his last store of bravery, turns to him, and says, "The night I was diluted out of Facebook, I took a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge. Amy stopped me before I did what I intended to do -- she said it would be a shame to die, I hadn't even gotten a chance to kiss her yet."

Amy pipes up, "Everyone should --"

"Get one last kiss," Eduardo finishes for her. She nods back.

Dustin's reaction is as immediate as it is unexpected; he shoves into Eduardo's personal space, accidentally bumping his chin in his haste to get his arms around him. It's at an awkward angle, jutting sideways in the booth, but Dustin still gets a strong enough grip on him to hug him so tight Eduardo can feel the pressure of it all the way down to his bones. He manages to snake his arms around Dustin to return the hold, because what else are you going to do?

"I had _no idea,"_ he says on a wobbling, mournful note, clutching harder at Eduardo. "I had no idea it was that bad -- the dilution happened and then you were gone and it was bad for a while, sure, but I -- I didn't know," and his voice changes, like he's saying something else entirely. "Eduardo, _I didn't know."_

"It's okay, Dustin," Eduardo manages to get out, because it is. It really _is._

The student waitress comes by, cradling a big communal bowl balanced on a tray. She blinks a little as she takes in Eduardo and Dustin, who probably look like they're made of nothing but arms, their faces all mushed up against each other like two gummy bears stuck together, but she recovers and sets down individual bowls on their placemats. She sets the big bowl of soup down in the middle of the table, and Eduardo straightens up at the smell, thick and salty and good.

"Dustin," Eduardo wheedles, after his first attempt to disengage from Dustin's stranglehold on his limbs results in a protesting squeak. "Dustin, I'm hungry, you should let me go."

Predictably, this just earns him a squeeze and a, "No."

Across the table, Amy pours herself some soup. Steam rises from the surface of her bowl, wisps curling in the air in a way that makes him think atmospherically; low-pressure and high-pressure systems playing out on top of one woman's soup like it's all there is on the globe. As he watches, she swirls her spoon around in it, testing, and egg whites drip off the edges when she lifts it, gingerly taking a sip. She grimaces and mouths, _hot._

"Dustin --" Eduardo tries again.

"Nope. I am hugging you to make up for the hundreds of thousands of hugs that the universe owes you."

" _Dustin,"_ says Amy in exasperation, but when Eduardo glances back at her, her entire face is fond. "You're delaying the inevitable question."

Dustin's voice goes even quieter. "I know."

Amy purses her lips; the soup ripples as she blows across it. One moment, and then another, and finally, Dustin sits back.

"I met Amy because she sent me flowers while I was in the hospital," he says.

"I saw the ad on one of my friend's Xangas, back when that was the thing," Amy explains. She pulls their bowls towards her and fills them to the brim with soup; little flecks of spring onions float to the top. Across the room, the Google employees are tugging the bill back and forth between them, arguing with the good-natured generosity of the recently paid. "A cheerful little pick-me-up thing. So I sent flowers to everybody on suicide watch at the hospital. Dustin here," she hands him his bowl and he beams, unselfconscious, and Eduardo closes his eyes; there's a sharp prickle of pain, because this news is what he was dreading. "Was the only one who tracked me down to thank me."

"And here we are," says Dustin, and the way he looks at Amy then makes her duck her chin, smiling so her cheeks plump up, apple-red and flushed.

 

-

One evening, In the early start of 2005, four things happened simultaneously.

On one end of the country, Eduardo Saverin stood in the center of Harvard Square the night before the beginning of his last semester at Harvard, swallowing down one cold gulp of air after the other until his lungs felt dry and cracked, brittle autumn leaves curled inside his chest. Finally, one of the Phoenix guys spotted him and crossed the lawn, calling out, "Jesus fuck, Saverin, put on some fucking gloves or something!" and Eduardo turned towards him, blinking, having forgotten that anyone in the world knew who he was.

Somewhere in one of those states in the middle that nobody could tell apart except for the people who lived there, a fertilized egg made a mad rush along one of Annalise Miller's fallopian tubes, as she panted and then laughingly shoved her husband out of the shower so she could finish getting ready for her graveyard shift. The resulting zygote would become Infinity Miller, who, twenty-six years from now, would discover a hitherto unknown beneficial element to _Stachybotrys atra,_ more commonly known as black mold.

In Montana, Terrence Boyd's 1971 red Saab made a worrying noise, but he bit his lip and kept driving, because Montana was fucking big and he didn't really know where he was.

At the opposite end of the country from Eduardo, Dustin Moskowitz twisted off the lid on a bottle of sleeping pills, his mind buzzing too heavy in his head. The next time he woke was when the paramedic unceremoniously shoved a catheter down his throat.

It's August now.

Annalise Miller is enormously pregnant, the grass is thickly viridian on top of Terrence Boyd's grave, and Dustin Moskowitz's still here, making a face at the memory of choking on a tube. His elbow brushes against Eduardo Saverin with every inhale.

"I mean," he says, jabbing his spoon at midair to punctuate his point. "She was a real nice lady, but I don't think I impressed her very much, vomiting up all those pills. She petted my hair as I hurled, though," he adds wistfully, and laughs when both Amy and Eduardo reach for his head, kneejerk, and submits to being patted like a well-loved housecat.

 

-

Why, though?

Why is both the easiest and the hardest question to answer, and in turn, the answer is always the easiest and the hardest to understand.

How did Dustin Moskowitz wind up staring at a palm full of pearly-coated sleeping tablets with the worst kind of well-deep apathy? Why did he swallow them?

"You don't have to tell me," says Eduardo instantly, catching the way Dustin's jaw clenches. "I mean, that's personal, man, none of my business." It was _months_ before Eduardo could properly and sensibly articulate what happened to him on that bridge.

"It's not that," Dustin's quick to reply. He fidgets back and forth. "I just -- I'm just afraid to tell you, is all. Like, you're just going to laugh and tell me what it's like to have some _real_ problems."

"Nobody wants real problems," Amy chimes in, beating Eduardo to it.

"She's right," he nods to her, as she slides her hands across the table, folding them around Dustin's in a familiar manner. "Everybody just likes to complain really loudly about the problems they _do_ have, because they're very real to them at the time. Everybody has problems, and everybody's fighting a hard battle, and they think that if they consume themselves with those, then the so-called 'real' problems won't show up."

"Yes, but ..." starts Dustin, and trails off into a shrug.

Amy gets it. "Sweetheart," she goes, rubbing her thumbs over his knuckles. "Don't do that to yourself. One person's reason for wanting to kill himself doesn't make any other person's less legitimate. It doesn't make you insipid, or stupid, or petty, no matter how trivial your reasons might seem when you put them up against somebody else's."

"The last thing I want the dilution to be," Eduardo nudges at Dustin's ribs, gentle. "Is a competition."

Dustin's eyes flutter closed.

"I'm twenty years old," he says, finally. "And I thought my life was over."

And for all intents and purposes, it was. He's so young, and nobody asked him if this was what he wanted. Nobody asked him if _this_ was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Nobody asked him if he was going to stay: it was just sort of implied that he was. Taken for granted, is another good way of putting it.

He'd gotten into Facebook just to be a bro, you know, is the thing. Help Mark out? Sure, Dustin's perfectly capable of that and has the time on his hands, no reason not to. Spend a summer in California in a house with a pool and all his best friends? Oh, please, like you were going to have to twist his arm very hard. 

Except then a summer turned into a semester, and a semester turned into a _company_ with a corner office and a million members and an engraved invitation to Oracle's yearly awards banquet, and Dustin ...

Dustin just kind of wanted to go home.

Like, you understand, right? He never intended to drop out of Harvard. He's just _twenty_ \-- he feels like there's a step he missed in there somewhere, the one where he gets to worry about things like how he's going to spend his three-day weekends when they're too short to merit a trip home, or if there's enough steak at the caf tonight, or whether Stephenie Attis from Mark's Art History class is ever going to get a Facebook so he can ask her out. But no, here he is, already sitting on a gross capital that makes him richer than both his middle-class working-outside-the-home parents, eating lunch with lawyers twice his age instead of the guys from AEPi.

He felt so fucking out of his depth and he just didn't _want_ it anymore, but there was nobody to tell.

Not Mark. Definitely not Mark, because he did all of this _for_ Mark, and these days, he's lucky if Mark has the time to acknowledge him at all.

Which, yes, is a very selfish thing to think, that's fine, Dustin beats himself up enough over wanting more than his fair share of Mark's attention already. He's very good at rationalizing things from Mark's perspective, because Mark's his best friend and _all_ he does is rationalize Mark's behavior, both to himself and to other people. Mark started Facebook with Eduardo and Sean and Dustin, and now all he has is Dustin.

And Dustin _tries._ Dustin tries to be enough, but the pressure of running a company like Facebook completely partnerless is cracking right through Mark's veneer of competence, and he needs _somebody._

So here's Dustin. Trapped and too tired to be twenty years old anymore, and yeah, that's enough to tip just a couple more pills into anybody's palm.

Eduardo gnaws at the skin inside his lips, a nasty kind of guilt souring and curdling inside his stomach, because he'd always glanced right over Mark and Dustin's friendship. It had seemed so _effortless._ It was easy to assume they were going to grow old together, because it would be more work to try and separate them than it would to keep them together, and Eduardo just assumed that whatever way Mark was going, Dustin was sure to follow. 

Not once had he stopped to think that even a friendship like Mark and Dustin's might occasionally be complicated. Eduardo wasn't the only one occupying rent space in that regard.

"But!" Dustin says, sitting up straight and clapping his hands together, grinning. "Here I am, recovering in the hospital, right? They have me under 24 hour surveillance to make sure I don't, like, try to finish the job, and in comes this delivery guy with this _huge_ thing of flowers, and my hand to God, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on. Like, I think the only reason why I didn't propose marriage to the guy on the spot was because he told me the delivery was from a secret admirer."

Eduardo tilts his head at Amy, curious.

"Everyone deserves to feel like there's someone out there who adores them," is all she says in explanation. "Everyone deserves someone who thinks they hung the moon."

"Nobody would tell me _who_ sent the flowers, though," continues Dustin. "But dude! I couldn't just let something like that go! I had to find who it was! Just to say thank you, you know?"

Which, admittedly, could have crossed the boundary into creepy ("quit stalking people, Dustin, the last thing I need is a Facebook programmer with a restraining order," three guesses who had the most to say about his quest,) except then he managed to track the order back to Amy, and introduced himself.

"Good thing I really fucking suck at killing myself, right?" he goes with some over-the-top saucy wink in Amy's direction.

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly, and a nudge of her toe into Eduardo's ankle is his cue to fish an ice cube from the bottom of his empty glass. Dustin yelps when it goes down the back of his shirt, almost bolting right up out of the booth like a cat whose tail just got trod on. 

While he wiggles around, squirming and trying to get the ice cube _out,_ Eduardo and Amy exchange a smile that's half a dozen things at once; fond and wistful and guilty and apologetic and amused and understanding.

 

-

They take Amy's car back up to the city. Eduardo sits in the back seat, watching the street lights catch at their faces in intermittent swoops, highlighting them in a sun-like halo of gold before plunging them into darkness again, fast as heartbeats.

His eyes track over the stretch of Dustin's cheeks, the pale highlights in Amy's hair, the way she drums on the bottom of the steering wheel in tune to whatever's playing in her head, the way Dustin scratches at his hairline and watches her with undisguised affection. Eduardo feels something close to profound, sitting there with a sleepy brain and a full stomach, like he's witnessing the dramatic turning point of a novel, something _bigger_ that what could possibly be contained in their skins, in this car.

Dustin needs to go back to his apartment to let his dogs out, he says, and Amy obliges, which is how Eduardo learns that Dustin has pets.

Eduardo doesn't know the layout of San Francisco well enough yet to understand the significance of the streets they drive down, Amy's car valiantly put-putting its way up each steep hill, but he can guess that the apartment complex they pull up to is closer to Amy's than it is to Facebook; that might be on purpose, or Dustin might have just really liked the neighborhood. Either way, the commute would be at least forty-five minutes every day. Amy slides into an open parking space, throwing the car into park and cranking up the parking brake with the ease of someone who's done it dozens of times before.

Dustin has two dogs; Eduardo can hear the ecstatic clicking of their nails rushing to the door before they've even reached the landing -- and two identical _thumps!_ as their bodies collide with the doorframe, their momentum too eager to be checked for something so ridiculous as physical boundaries.

A pair of labs shove their snouts through the door as soon as Dustin wrestles it open, the ferocious wagging of their tails making their whole bodies teeter precariously back and forth.

This is Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2, and they are jaggernauts of affection. Collectively between them, they have a brain the size of a walnut.

"They have real names, of course," Dustin explains, and pulls a face. "I just don't remember what they are. We voted on them in an interdepartment poll at Facebook, so I'm sure they're very clever names. I just call them this because it's easier."

Dumb Thing 1 is gingerbread-colored all over, from his eyes to the pads of his paws to his nose. His favorite thing in the world is the vowel sound "oo" in conjunction with a hard consonant, usually the letter d, like the combinations found in the word "food." Everything, he believes with a level of faith only comparable to Joan d'Arc, is food up until it disappears down somebody else's throat.

Dumb Thing 2 is blonde, big and droolingly stupid, and her favorite things in the world are long walks on the beach and the musty smell of old books.

"Go for a --" starts Dustin, and both dogs freeze, faces turned up to him and whole bodies poised on the edge of movement. When he finishes with " _walk?"_ they freak out, careening around the furniture and skittering for the door.

Dustin tosses him a leash, so Eduardo kneels down to clip it to Dumb Thing 2's collar. She turns to him, snuffling eagerly at the smell of Chinese food on his clothes and who-knows-what in his hair, so excited by the new sensory information that she almost knocks herself over, and Eduardo has to put a bracing hand on her back, telling her, "Hold still!" which only makes her vibrate harder, a whine catching in the back of her throat like she's gone into overload.

Amy grabs a jacket out from under a pile of laundry that's growing like a cancerous lump on Dustin's sofa; the rest of the pile tips like a Jenga tower, spilling several loose socks to the floor. She slips the jacket on over her dress, zipping it to her chin, but her legs are still bare underneath the hem of her skirt.

Eduardo tries not to remember what it was like to wake up and watch those legs traipse back and forth across his line of sight.

He tries not to remember what it was like to kiss her, because then it's just too easy to remember what it was like to stand there and watch Dustin do the same.

It's at least ten degrees colder in the city than it was back in the southern Bay Area, even in the middle of August; the wind cuts straight through the shirt Eduardo's wearing, making him hunch his shoulders up around his ears like a bird. Dumb Thing 2 tangles her leash around his legs, and just stands there and waves her tail, completely enjoying the spectacle of Eduardo trying to untangle them again.

For a moment, they stand at the corner, waiting for the light to change. Traffic moves steadily, the sweep of headlights catching them intermittently. The power line pole between them has a single sign on it -- an ad for a responsible babysitter, after-school hours listed, with a fringe of rip-off scraps of phone numbers at the bottom. The rest of the post is covered in a thick armor of nail heads, remnants of notices long torn off; all the lost dogs and vaccuums for sale and garage-band concert advertisements that have come before.

Finally, when Eduardo can't stand the quiet a moment longer, he turns to Amy and just bluntly asks, "Why didn't ever tell me you had a boyfriend?"

There's no accusation in his voice, not really, because there were enough context clues that he could have guessed a boyfriend _existed,_ but Amy flinches anyway. All those long-distance IM conversations, Eduardo thinks, and she never once mentioned sending flowers to everybody on suicide watch. She never mentioned any boy who chased her, asked her out, became her boyfriend; a boy who just happened to be named Dustin Moskowitz and once stuck his hand down the back pocket of Eduardo's pants in the middle of Harvard Square to scandalize the volunteers handing out _Are You Going to Hell_ pamphlets on the steps.

Eduardo's friendships mostly happen to him by accident, so he's not the best judge on how they work, but he thinks that might be the kind of thing friends share with each other.

"I wasn't expecting --" she starts, and then cuts herself off, looking down at the pavement, her jaw working furiously. 

Dustin looks between them, uncomfortable, and the dogs are oblivious.

Eduardo's imagination can finish that sentence in any number of ways. _I wasn't expecting you to actually pursue me. I wasn't expecting to ever have to introduce you two. I wasn't expecting to have to say no to you, Eduardo._

_I wasn't expecting you to fall in love with me._

_I wasn't expecting to fall in love with you._

(That last one can't just be wishful thinking, can it?)

"Maybe," she tries again. "If I'd thought it was relevant --" she shakes her head, dismissing that thought, and continues almost angrily, "It would have helped if you guys ever just, like, _talked_ about each other. I can't connect all the dots by myself, you know. 'Oh, hey, my friend Dustin used to say stuff like that.' 'Funny, that's my boyfriend's name!' 'Hey, would you look at that, that guy Eduardo you know? Yeah, when I was talking about how our last CFO got diluted out, I was kind of talking about him.' No big deal or anything."

Eduardo opens his mouth to retort, but Dustin talks over him.

"It's a good thing this isn't the last time we'll all get to act like idiots, then, is it?" He lifts his eyebrows pointedly.

It distracts Amy, because she lifts her chin and steps off the curb as soon as the walk sign illuminates. "Speak for yourself," she goes loftily, the need to respond to Dustin with a sarcastic rejoinder outweighing her annoyance. "I'm never an idiot."

"Says the girl who slept with Sean Parker," Dustin remarks, dry.

Amy's mouth drops open in comical horror, all _how dare you?_ , and Eduardo feels a sick plunging swoop in his stomach, like missing the last stair in the dark. His emotions seesaw in every direction.

"You -- you slept with Sean _Parker?"_ he manages.

She tossed him an unimpressed look over her shoulder, like she can feel him judging her life choices from back there. "I slept _on_ him," she corrects. "And -- and I didn't really know who he was until we woke up. Shhh with the judging," she adds severely, after a pause. "I thought we agreed not to do that."

 

-

They walk a loop around the neighborhood, and are on their way back up, the dogs trailing lackadaisical and delighted at the ends of their leashes, when Dustin's phone rings. 

He pulls it out, checking the caller ID. His phone is electric blue and micro-thin -- a Razor, so new it can only be a couple weeks off the assembly line. They're not even open for nationwide sale yet, if Eduardo remembers the press release correctly. "Yallo?" he goes. "Which of my incredibly annoying siblings is this?" 

A pause, and then Dustin says cheerfully, "I know I don't have any siblings, Mom, just checking your memory."

He makes an apologetic face at Eduardo and Amy as he hands off Dumb Thing 1's leash before sliding out of earshot, saying as he goes, "No, Mother dearest, I'm not dead in a ditch, though I appreciate that you called the area hospitals before you thought to double-check with me. That was nice. No, I was at Chris's graduation party --"

When Eduardo glances at Amy, he finds her smiling after him; a taffy-like pull of affection at the corners of her mouth. She burrows her hands into the warmth of the fleece's pockets, and comes up with a starlight mint.

Eduardo knows that if you gave Dustin a laundry list of adjectives, he would pick dysfunctional to describe his own family, the way most everybody who has ever wanted to tear their hair out because of their family does, but Eduardo can't shake the feeling that Dustin just walked into a shop at one point and picked them off a shelf, because his parents are _unreal._

This one time at Harvard, Mr. and Mrs. Moskowitz showed up the day after Dustin got put on academic suspension for underage possession and disruptive behavior and had a row right in the middle of the Ad Board, saying that yeah, their son was a bit off and maybe also a little inappropriate, but if he wanted to be crazy, he could jolly well be crazy and nobody got hurt by it, so the whole fucking Ivy League could suck on _that._

Up until that point, Eduardo had never _heard_ an adult say 'suck on that' before, and he's still deeply impressed and a little wistful about the whole thing, even years later.

Dustin comes from an extremely functional family, who actually, like, communicate, and love almost without thought. Maybe the reason Eduardo always enjoyed Dustin's company was because he needed to bask in that -- the idea that it really could be as simple as that.

He nudges Amy's shoulder with his. "Is this what it's like, being you?" he asks, when she tilts her head up to him, curious.

"I don't know any other way to be," she responds, shoving the mint into the pouch of her cheek to reply. "But yes. La vie d'Amy et Dustin, mais oh, how exciting it is. I don't know," she corrects herself a beat later. "In the spirit of how we met, we now have this hobby of doing at least one nice thing a day."

"How very Amelie Poulain," he says, and she ribs him.

"It makes us feel better," she says. "Which maybe isn't the true altruistic reason to be doing it, or whatever, but it works for us. Have you ever just wanted to be kind? For no other reason than you wanted to?"

 

-

Sunday morning, and Eduardo has a flight to catch later this afternoon. Tomorrow is Monday and his work won't look too favorably on it if he calls in with a bad case of being on the wrong side of the country.

But not right at this second. He doesn't need to do anything particularly pressing right this second, which is how he finds himself sitting on the bench in Gate Park, watching a group of tourists huddle on the vista with their disposable cameras, looking like a bunch of candy-colored terns clinging to a cliff face. In the daylight, the Golden Gate Bridge doesn't look like anything but what it really is -- majestic against the sky, incongruently red, and not at all like the number one suicide point in America.

It might be closure, if Eduardo's willing to let himself feel that way. The last time he was here, he'd just lost everything and looked out over a bleak nothingness, and there's something cathartic in being able to stand on this side of something like that and think, _Look how far I've come._

He hears a familiar laugh behind him, bright as broken glass, and then Amy and Dustin throw themselves down onto the bench, crowding into him from either side. Dustin's hair is flat against his skull, still wet from his shower, and the breeze coming up off the water makes him shiver all the way down to his toes.

Amy has a twist-tied bag of stale toaster bagels in her lap, which had been sitting in the passenger foot well of her car for the whole duration of Eduardo's stay. She tears off too-big chunks, which she then uses to lure in the seagulls, just to see them squabble. The ensuing commotion attracts the attention of a couple of the tourists, but nobody comes over.

Eduardo watches Dustin, who watches Amy gloat as the seagulls fight over moldy bread. Dustin's arm stretches across the back of the bench, forearm to Eduardo's spine and fingers drifting across Amy's shoulder.

"Are you mad?" Eduardo asks him, unable to help himself. "That I fell in love with your girlfriend?"

Amy straightens up, looking over, but Dustin just smiles and drops his head back, sunlight highlighting the blue veins underneath his skin and washing the rest of the color out. 

When he speaks, his voice is warmer even than the light.

"Who are we kidding, Wardo, man," he goes, smiling up at the sky. "I was never angry. Let's face it. Out of all the people in the world who could have kissed my girlfriend, I don't think I could have picked a better person for it than you."

He meets Eduardo's eyes, questing, and whatever he finds there makes him nod. Eduardo doesn't mind; he thinks that Dustin might just be the strongest and most powerful out of everybody he knows. He has the single most useful quality that the rest of them, Mark and Sean included, only _wished_ that they had -- a thick skin. Dustin can take any kind of verbal abuse, and has, because nobody ever bothered to tell him that words broke bones faster than sticks and stones and diluted shares.

"And you?" It's Amy's turn. She ignores the riled-up seagulls completely, studying him. "Are you mad? Are you hurt?"

Eduardo shakes his head. "No," he says honestly. It's stupid to have expected her to tell him about Dustin when he didn't tell her the truth about the dilution; he kept Facebook's name out of it, so she had just as few context clues to go on as he did. If he's serious about the lawsuit, he's going to have to be more forthcoming. 

And, because it feels like he should say it, he adds, "Sorry I didn't give you a chance to explain. Sorry if I pressured you."

For this, she hits him across the shoulder, hard enough to hurt.

"Dummy," she says, but she's smiling.

Eduardo nudges both of them at the soft part of their ribs, grinning when they squirm away. "Come on, we should go back to Chris's, since we kind of ditched his party to --"

"-- have drama?" Amy offers, wry.

"Work things out like adults," Dustin corrects.

Eduardo grins. "He did pay for my plane ticket. The least I can do is bring him some greasy hangover food."

Dustin flings his arms up like he's announcing a goal. "Oh my god, magic words!" He leaps up. "I don't even need a hangover for that to sound good. Greasy food, let's go!"

 

 

-

_**Recipe 4**_

**4\. chocolate chip pancakes**   
_These feel-good classics don't need an introduction, do they?_

_**1.** Grease a griddle or frying pan and turn the heat on medium-high.  
 **2.** Mix 2 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups milk, 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup canola oil, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl, dry ingredients first.  
 **3.** Ladle pancake batter onto the griddle (above quantities should make six pancakes.) When the surface starts to bubble, flip! Cook until golden brown.  
 **4.** Top with ice cream or maple syrup and serve._

 

 

"I'm coming east for grad school!" Amy tells him, her voice crackling over the connection like the news has been waiting to burst out of her. It's late February now, and today's the first day since November that there's been any sunlight, weak and pale as it is, so Eduardo stands outside the post office, phone tucked warmly against his ear. He's got a box at his feet, full of textbooks from his freshman and sophomore years, which he now recalls only in vague impressions, as time is wont to do to memories.

He says, "Really? Where?"

"Everywhere I could conceivably fill out an application for. Where else am I going to go? All the good ones are out there. Assuming I can get into their programs."

" _Please,"_ goes Eduardo, not even pausing to feel guilty about the blatant Ivy League privilege in grad schools like he usually is. "I've seen your transcript, you'll be fine. Why don't you just continue with Stanford, though?"

"I'm twenty-three," she says, laughter in her voice. "And I've never left California except for a school trip to Washington D.C. when I was fourteen. I want to leave the nest eventually."

"I love how you consider the whole state of California to be your nest."

She laughs again, and Eduardo lifts a hand to cover the other ear, the one that isn't getting laughed in, which feels twice as cold, bitten raw by the wind.

It's been six months since he's seen her face; the memory of it in his mind is as perpetually sunbathed as the golden hills of Napa Valley, the brightness of it directly proportional to the gray overcast world he's currently in.

"So yeah," Amy chatters. " _Depending_ on my acceptance --" she ignores Eduardo's dismissive noise. "I probably will be moving out there around July or August."

"Okay. _Depending_ on which school begs the hardest for your attendance, I will come see you and help you move in and throw you a housewarming party," Eduardo promises immediately, even though his work allows for only the bare minimum for government-sanctioned vacation days and will frown if he takes off travel days. He can do it -- Eduardo can write the _book_ on efficient time management.

She makes a pleased noise in his ear. "I am going to hold you to that," and Eduardo can't help but grin at the scarcely-surpressed excitement in her voice.

 

-

" _So,"_ she drags out, and Eduardo licks mustard off his thumb, putting the rest of his sandwich back down in its foil wrapper, because she makes it sound like this is something he should have his hands free for. "I ... have a question."

"Yes, I am pregnant, but it's not yours," Eduardo quips, kneejerk; across the table, his coworker quirks an eyebrow at him, but she knows better than to ask -- _anyone_ who lives in New York knows better than to ask -- and instead just pulls out her compact, pretending to be absorbed in checking to see if her make-up is up to professional standards. They have twenty-five minutes for lunch.

(Her name is Irene, and at this moment in time, she is 24 years old. Her favorite things in the world include the word "bromeliad," licking chip dust off her fingers when she's pleasantly full, and the satisfaction that comes with saying "I told you so." Her least favorite things in the world include cold snow on her ankles, people who honk when they blow their nose in public, and toilets in public restrooms that auto-flush before she's done. Like Eduardo, she's here because she thinks there's no future anywhere else, but neither of them will ever mention it to the other.)

"Oh, ha ha," goes Amy. "No. Okay, wait for it." She lets the suspense build accordingly, and then she asks, all in a rush, "Do you happen to know if there are any apartments near you that one twenty-something graduate student could afford?"

"Near ..." Eduardo sits bolt upright, bracing himself with a hand flat on the table. " _Wait._ Are you --"

"Two-year masters program at NYU, _bitches!"_

The news thrills all the way down the center of Eduardo's chest, tightening across his sternum like a particularly warm hug. "Congratulations, Amy, that's fantastic," he gets out, before the implication sinks in. "And you're coming _here_ for grad school!"

"You've seen my city, it's time I come to yours," she agrees. "And also, you know, get some continuing education. But mostly so that I can live in New York City. Who _hasn't_ thought about what it would be like to live in New York City?"

"This is true," Eduardo allows. He drums the flat of his hand on the tabletop. His coworker's gathering up her trash; she catches his eye and taps her wrist pointedly. Their lunch break is up. He nods at her, and Irene leaves, her heels clicking sharply on the cafeteria linoleum. "So, wait, you'll come out ... at the end of the summer?"

"Yes, assuming I can arrange some kind of living situation."

Around his last quickly-inhaled bite of food, he goes, "Apartment hunting in New York is a life experience. Jesus Christ, Amy, you're coming to New York!"

"I _know!"_ her voice slides up an octave in delight, and on the other end, he hears two identical voices start howling in counterpoint: Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2, he'd be willing to guess, and laughs. Somewhere in the background, he can hear Dustin wail, _"don't encourage them!"_

 

-

There are three jars of mayonnaise on the counter in front of him. All three of them have been opened, which makes him scowl, because why is that even necessary? Why not just use one until it's gone, and _then_ buy and open another one?

He's trying to determine which of them is the closest to empty when, from the other room, Trevor calls out, "Hey, Thork, there's an Amelie Poulain who wants to talk to you!"

Eduardo blinks and straightens up. "Are you on my laptop?"

"You were on mine, bro!" Trevor retorts, indignant. "You forgot to log out of my e-mail client. Since when did you have Gmail?"

"Since before they even started calling it Gmail," Eduardo leaves the mayonnaise dilemma behind on Trevor's counter -- it's so cluttered that it doesn't really matter, because Trevor's one of those types who's never been able to throw anything away on the hope that he'll need it again someday.

Trevor hefts his laptop up to set it on the back of the sofa, and Eduardo rolls up his sleeves and bends down to see the screen. His inbox is up, and there's a chat message flashing.

 

**Amelie Poulain (amelie_poulain@googlemail.com)**  
19:12 hey  
19:12 hey  
19:12 hey  
19:12 hey are you around?

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:15 I am now. What's up? :)

 

**Amelie Poulain (amelie_poulain@googlemail.com)**  
19:15 HI.  
19:15 Um, okay. So, change of plan.  
19:15 do you know anyone in nyc who needs a roommate? because i cannot afford an apartment on my own.  
19:16 holy shit, real estate in your city is insane.

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:16 Oh, trust me, I know.  
19:16 My ex-girlfriend and I bought our apartment together.

 

**Amelie Poulain (amelie_poulain@googlemail.com)**  
19:17 is this the ex that then set said apartment on fire?

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:17 The one and only! :P

 

"Who is it?" Trevor goes. He hooks his arm around the back of the sofa cushion, setting his chin down on his folded hands and batting his eyelashes at Eduardo like a lamb. "Is it a lady?"

"Yes, she's a lady."

"You know a lady?"

"Yes."

Trevor scoots closer, leering. "A real lady? Is she a real lady, Thork?"

"Shut up," says Eduardo, reaching over to cover Trevor's face with his palm and give it a shove. "Go away. Do something useful with your life. I am about to ask a girl if she wants to move in with me."

This makes Trevor choke on his laughter, and he sits bolt upright again, crossing his socked feet underneath his thighs and giving Eduardo his full attention. "Wait, wait, your friend from Frisco?" he asks. "The one wrapped up in your serious-business lawsuit?"

"Amy has nothing to do with my lawsuit except for the fact she's dating another Facebook employee and shareholder." He chews on his bottom lip, backspacing out of the beginning of one sentence and starting on another, trying to find the best way to phrase it.

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:21 If you're looking for somewhere affordable, I could actually definitely use a roommate.  
1921 We can split rent so long as you promise not to set anything of mine on fire.

 

**Amelie Poulain (amelie_poulain@googlemail.com)**  
19:22 ....  
19:23 it would make my life so much easier, but are you sure?

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:23 Trust me, it would make my life so much easier, too :)  
19:23 And my other option is to sell the one I have and move to one of the boroughs, or move in with Trevor, and no.  
19:23 Just no.

 

"Hey!" Trevor protests. He's peering shamelessly over the top of the screen; Eduardo has no idea how he can read what he's typing upside down, but everyone has their talents.

"Shhh," Eduardo goes, fighting the urge to start promising Amy weird things until he gets an answer. It's not a lie, he really has been looking at finding himself a roommate -- living in Manhattan isn't getting any more affordable, not even for someone who can make money as easily as Eduardo.

 

**Amelie Poulain (amelie_poulain@googlemail.com)**  
19:24 then, mister saverin, you have yourself a roommate :)

 

"Aren't you in love with her?" Trevor wants to know, when Eduardo flings his hands into the air in wordless victory. He steals his laptop back, spinning it around to read the answer.

"She's one of my best friends," Eduardo corrects him, and sits on Trevor in order to wrestle the laptop away.

 

**Eduardo S. Saverin (saverin101@googlemail.com)**  
19:25 Okay  
19:25 Question: how many jars of mayonnaise do you think one person needs, on average?

 

-

The superintendent charges through the nose for air conditioning costs, so in the summer, Eduardo sacrifices dignity for comfort and sheds his clothes as soon as he gets home, because he doesn't need pit stains on his nice shirts. He leaves the windows propped open; the dull roar of garbage trucks and a chorus of friendly honking are a constant background soundtrack to his life.

To celebrate unpacking the last box, Eduardo makes orange juice from scratch ("you can take the Floridian out of Florida ..." Amy starts, and squawks when Eduardo waves a fleshy orange zest in her face,) and pours them two tall glasses. The glasses themselves are Amy's, familiar and broken in; the summer-colored sunflower decal is wearing off just a little bit from years of use. He turns around, shuffling around the edge of the kitchenette.

Standing at the bookshelf, which is now very crowded and split down the middle between his and hers, separated by a pair of Rodin's The Thinker bookends, Amy's running the tip of her finger along the spines of his books. She smiles, moving from a general business solutions tome to a cloud atlas to _The Essential Perspective to Meteorology,_ which still has its Used stick on it from the Harvard bookstore.

"Classes start on Monday, don't they?" he asks, nudging her with her glass to get her attention.

She smiles, taking it from him to drink it down. Her sandy hair is tied up into a topknot, and sweat shines at the nape of her neck. "Yes," she says, and gives him a droll look. "How does it feel to be out of the clutches of academia?"

"Quite well, thank you," Eduardo answers airily. "I am on the _exact_ career path I wanted going into college."

If you selectively ignore the messy _it'll be like a final club, Wardo, except we're the president_ and _a billion dollars_ and _you set me up!_ and _one last kiss before you die_ that happened there in the middle, then Eduardo's not doing bad for himself. Manhattan isn't cheap, though, and sure, Eduardo's getting some extra revenue from Facebook, but he's not on the masthead and he still only has .03% worth of shares. Ironically, he's _still_ earning more from Facebook than his other investments at the moment, that's how insanely profitable it is.

She lifts her glass in a toast. "To you," she says. "And all the other happy little Wall Street minions."

"May we each play to our strengths," Eduardo returns, and they drink. The orange juice is heavenly and cool going down their throats, and outside the window, New York carries on, noisy and constant.

 

-

They dance around each other in the mornings, ducking in and out of the bathroom to get ready; Amy tethered to the outlet by her hairdryer, Eduardo bent to spit his mouthwash into the sink. He courteously averts his gaze every time she shimmies into a bra underneath her towel after she showers, and sometimes she steals his electric razor and leaves it somewhere he can't find it, so he winds up going into work with day-old stubble.

"Here," she goes, just a couple weeks after she moved in. It's September now, and the Indian summer is digging in hard; Eduardo already has the oscillating fan on in the bedroom, and it's not even eight in the morning yet.

She drops her phone against his shoulder, and he snatches at it before it tumbles to the floor.

"I need to shower," she says. "Talk to my boyfriend."

He rolls his eyes at her retreating back and lifts the phone to his ear. "Dustin."

" _Waaaarrrrr_ do!" he gets in reply.

He has the most recent METAR readings from La Guardia up on his laptop, which tells him as of forty-five minutes ago, visibility was clear and the sky showed only scattered cirrus, capping up at 25,000 feet. Scarcely any wind was reported at all; a gust out of the southeast at a piddly three knots. All of this adds up to tell Eduardo that today is going to be scorchingly hot. His suit jacket is still on its hanger on his bedroom door; he looks at it long-sufferingly.

"Dustin," he goes, eyes flicking back to the corner of the screen. "It's, like, five in the morning where you are. Have you been to bed yet?"

"Of course not!" Dustin answers cheerily. "We're pushing an important update. We never sleep when we push important updates."

Eduardo can believe that. "Don't you have underlings who can do that? I've seen your portfolio, I know you have the capital to hire underlings to do those kinds of things. The rest of you need sleep."

"Yeah, but it's not the same as being there yourself. Like," there's a clatter on the other end of the line and a quickly muttered _shit._ Dustin gesticulates whenever he talks and probably just knocked something over. "Like, imagine that updates are kittens. You can get _anyone_ to babysit your newborn kittens because they're _kittens,_ but you want to be there the first time they open their eyes. It's necessary."

"Dustin," Eduardo cuts in kindly. "You're starting to talk about code like it's cuddly. You should sleep."

"Yeah, but I ..." he trails off, and then asks hopefully, "I could call you later? When do you guys get home?"

"Um," Eduardo glances at the closed bathroom door. "Well, my shift's over at five, which means I probably won't actually get out the door until closer to eight."

Dustin makes a dry noise in the back of his throat; they both know a thing or two about what happens when an overachiever meets an over-demanding job. "Are you doing anything afterwards?"

"Yeah, I'm meeting Amy at the flower shop to pick out something for delivery, after she gets the room numbers for the area suicide watch." He thinks about it. "Actually, yeah, you should really call us then, you can help us pick out arrangements."

" _Yes."_ Something else clatters heavily in the background. "I want to help write the cards, too, leave it to me! I'm going to write them sonnets of encouragement! Are sonnets a thing? Are sonnets acceptable expressions of sentiment these days?"

Eduardo waits for his laptop to shut down before he lowers the lid, and turns to tug on his shoes over his heels one-handed. Inside the bathroom, the pipes groan with feeling as Amy cranks the shower off.

"Do you even know what a sonnet is?" he asks.

"How dare you," Dustin says, all faux-indignant. "I am a proud Harvard drop-out, of _course_ I know my styles of poetic verse."

A wash of steam comes billowing out of the bathroom when Amy flings the bathroom door open to get airflow. Eduardo grimaces at the heat. She comes out, twisting her dripping hair up and clipping it to the top of her head, her towel knotted under one armpit. She raises an eyebrow at the expression on Eduardo's face and takes the phone back from him.

"Dustin, dear," she says. "Judging by Eduardo's face, you really need to get some sleep." She listens to the reply, then lowers the phone to her shoulder to inform Eduardo, "he says to keep your judging judge-y face to yourself."

" _Your_ face," Eduardo retorts, and goes to get his briefcase.

"Boys," Amy sighs.

 

-

At Thanksgiving, they migrate like birds, returning to their own nests; Eduardo heads south to Miami, and Amy to her father's house inland of Berkeley. Eduardo has to learn all over again what it's like to not have your best friend sitting within easy reach; he'd gotten so used to having a roommate that he'd forgotten to remember that it's strange, living in somebody else's pocket all the time.

If living with Amy, who feeds her bagels to pigeons and likes to come up with elaborate schemes to make people's day, has changed him in any fundamental way, his parents don't seem to notice. His mother asks him very civil questions about work and the turkey's too dry, even after he bathes it in gravy.

It's disheartening to realize that he probably could have stayed in New York for the holiday and wouldn't have been missed, so after his father silently retreats into his study to listen to talk radio, Eduardo sits in the front parlor with his laptop open on his knees. He checks his stocks, his bank account, the Unisys weather satellites, reads an e-mail from Ricky about this DJ he met at a party and one from Gretchen that's considerably more coherent and has better spelling, and decides there's enough time before it's dinner on the West Coast to call Amy.

There's a click after the fourth ring, and a man's voice goes, gruff and distant, "oh okay that did something ... what's this?"

"Um," Eduardo replies, because that's not Amy. "Hello?"

The man's voice gets further away. "Amelia! Your phone was ringing so I hit a button on the screen and something happened. Now what do I do?" There's a beat of pause, and then the voice is right in Eduardo's ear, sounding as pleasant as a car commercial. "She's telling me to tell you that she's up to her elbows in turkey bast and that I should entertain you until she's able to come to the phone."

"Hello, Mr. Ritter," says Eduardo, amused. "Happy Thanksgiving."

"Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving to you too, uhh ..."

"Eduardo," he supplies. "I'm Amy's roommate."

"Oh, right, of course! How are you, young man? Are you watching the game?"

Eduardo is _not_ watching the game, but he has a browser window open in front of him, so all it takes is a one-handed keystroke to pull up Google. Winning overs girls' fathers is not something Eduardo's ever had to try very hard at -- he's pretty much custom-ready acceptable as he is; a Harvard graduate with a promising job on Wall Street, well-dressed and polite and capable of intelligent conversation.

When Amy snatches the phone from her father about ten minutes later, the first thing she says is, "Are you okay?"

He laughs. "I'm fine, but did you know that your dad probably smokes more pot in a week than I have in my entire life?"

"Oh, god, don't get me started. The shit grows like weed around here." She pauses. "No pun intended."

Eduardo flies home the next morning and goes into work shortly after the noon report. When he tucks his briefcase next to his console, Irene looks up from hers. They meet each other's eyes through the mess of wires, and her mouth curls.

"As little time as politely possible with the parental units, I take it?" she goes.

"Got it in one. Adopting American holidays was fun at first, but now it's just ... no. How's our money doing?"

"Our money is moving wonderfully, see?" she swings her console around to face him. They track the DOW, following the surge and fall of the morning -- Black Friday is insanely busy for everyone, not just retailers -- and nod to themselves. It's 2006, and get-rich-quick schemes are the current vogue (although he supposes they've _always_ been the Wall Street fashion.)

Economic forecasts are no different than weather forecasts in that it's all a matter of reading the right signs. Eduardo once made $300,000 on the bet that he could read the right signs, so he can look at what they're doing here and he can safely say it'll come back to bite them in about five years, but Eduardo fully intends on getting out of the country before they see that crash.

(The problem, though, with living with a liberal arts major is that Eduardo can't help but look at his coworkers and see them the way Amy must see them: as people with degrees in shorthand on how to screw each other over and get rich doing it; people who are desperate for somebody else to do something kind for them so they can pretend there must be nice people in the world, that they can continue to be nasty because at least someone else will be nice.

People, Amy likes to say, are just patchwork quilts of the things they love, things they hate, people they love, and people whose opinions they've never been able to shake.)

"Hey," he goes. "Do you want to get drinks later?" Irene blinks up at him bemusedly, so he turns on his most soliciting smile. "In the spirit of the season."

"Absolute excess?" she finishes.

"Exactly so."

She studies him for a beat longer. She has high cheekbones and make-up that's supposed to look natural, like she didn't have to get up an hour early to build herself up to an unforgiving beauty standard. She has an engagement ring on her finger, something so small and simple that Eduardo assumes she said yes because of the guy, not because of the ring.

"Drinks are on me," he promises, and smiles wider.

 

-

He's standing at his own locked front door, tugging uselessly on the handle, and contemplating what he's supposed to do now, when it slips from his hand and swings open, revealing Amy, propped up on the door frame and wearing her pajamas.

"You're lucky I wasn't asleep yet," she tells him dryly.

"I was just about to practice my lock-picking skills," he informs her, solemn. The door should be used to it, he thinks -- it used to get picked all the time when Christy and Eduardo were fighting.

Her eyebrow lifts. He tries to remember if she's supposed to be home yet. "Where's your key?"

"In my pocket."

She looks at him.

"Too far away," he explains.

Blinking some, she sways in, breathing deep through her nose like she's checking him for B.O. "You are so intoxicated," she concludes, and sighs, pushing the door open wider. She's dressed like she was going to bed, which he blinks at, before he remembers that it's after midnight and for some people, that means sleep. "Well, come on in, then. Why is it always action/reaction with you? Why can't you ever just hang out with your friends?"

Eduardo is standing down falling up drunk, which wasn't his intention, but the threshold is proving problematic, so he eyeballs it warily. He _was_ doing just fine up until this point -- just keep moving forward, that's the trick, for drunk walking and for, like, life or something. 

"That's what I was just doing," he replies, indignant.

"Yeah, with your work friends," she corrects him gently, and, realizing his problem, shoulders underneath his armpit and lets him lean on her as she half-carries him inside. "You're not actually off the clock when you're with them, you just think that you should be. But you're still just ... working, and that's not how you treat friends."

She gets him horizontal in his bed, which is discombobulating for a beat, but he adjusts and thinks about it. He remembers how he felt at his parents' house yesterday; he's been living by himself since Kirkland, and he'd gotten used to it up until he didn't have to anymore, and suddenly, here's Amy, standing over him looking fond and dryly amused by turns, her hair tumbled loose and her hands on her hips.

He stretches out with an arm, and she wavers for a moment, rocking onto the balls of her feet and back again. Making her decision, she props one knee up on his mattress and stretches herself out next to him.

He pulls her in with his arm for a brief, slightly lopsided hug, before he backs off again, mumbling something like, "Sorry, drunk touching is bad touching, I don't mean to ... like, invade your space."

"And I'm telling you," she says, so very quiet he has to squint at her mouth to make sure it's actually moving. "That I don't mind. Not when it's you. Promise."

He smiles at that, and shifts so that they can share a pillow.

"There are four million people in New York," he tells her, and she nods like that's fascinating and he should tell her more, the way you do during drunk conversation. "But if I had to save anybody, it'd probably just be you and Trevor. That list used to be longer, but my ex moved out to California. We were on okay terms before then, I guess, although I don't know how much of it was friendship so much as perpetual fear of arson."

Amy looks impressed. "You can't walk in a straight line, but you can say 'perpetual'?"

Eduardo shrugs modestly. "I'm awesome."

She shows teeth. "Does that mean I'm your best friend?" she goes, teasingly.

"Absolutely," he says, and her eyelids flutter in surprise, like his words were a physical thing. He's watching, so he sees it dawn on her: a bridge, spaghetti for breakfast, egg drop soup, two dumb dogs, and years of IM conversations do, in fact, make a relationship: a good one, a strong one, and one of the most solid damn friendships of Eduardo's whole life.

 

-

The Ritters took a trip to Aspen once, after Amy's mom won a raffle from her AA group, and that was the first and last time Amy saw snow.

Around the time she starts making noises about needing to study for her final exams, they get their first real hard frost, the kind that strips every last bit of fiery New England autumn from the trees and freezes the hairs inside their noses as soon as they step outside. Amy goes for a jog that morning and when she comes back, she bursts into the apartment and stands there on the mat, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet and shaking like a leaf.

"Holy _fuck,"_ she gets out. "It's _cold_ out there!"

He laughs, but December turns into January (Amy's there to light the menorah with him on the first night of Hanukkah, since it falls early this year, and then flies home for a week for what she calls C.C. -- Commercial Christmas -- with the gleeful avarice of an only child in a nuclear family,) and the weather settles into the endless winter doldrums; days of slate-grey skies and wind-cracked trees and people who walk with their chins tucked low to their chests.

It doesn't change, not for days going into weeks, and Amy begins to curl in on herself.

January's hard on everyone, Eduardo knows, but it's the first time Amy's ever had to face _hard_ winter weather at the same time, and he remembers his freshman year at Harvard; how he would have traded everything just to see green grass and blue sky again. It's _awful._

He writes it off as an effect of the weather for so long that it catches him off guard when he gets back to the apartment with fast food in greasy bags and finds Amy on the couch, textbooks heaped in unopened stacks on the coffee table and the lines of her back folded up like a paper plane. He touches her shoulder to get her attention, and she flinches away from him, full-body. Eduardo curls his fingers back and thinks, _oh,_ because this isn't just doldrums. This is something a lot more serious.

He doesn't remember her last act of kindness.

You forget, sometimes, that it's possible for other people to feel like this too.

Amy has never stood on the Golden Gate Bridge after losing the only thing she ever cared to have, and she's never emptied a bottle of sleeping pills into her palm, feeling so hopeless it was like dropping into still-deep well water, but that doesn't mean she can't get so depressed that it takes every last fissure of strength she has just to get out from behind her computer screen.

Whenever Eduardo comes by, touching the wing of her shoulder to offer her tea or hot chocolate or a pillow, she looks back at him hollowly, like she's only seeing him in grey film.

You can snatch someone back from the railing of a bridge, and you can shove a tube down someone's throat until they vomit, but how can you defeat this? 

This thing that creeps in, slow?

 

-

"I mean, I've been trying to carry on like nothing's wrong," Eduardo confesses, phone crooked into the hollow of his shoulder. "Because I don't want to, like, make it into a _thing,_ you know? I don't want to make her feel like she has to be cheerful just because I've noticed that she's depressed, but I don't know what to do."

He's sitting on the bathmat, shag threads coarse under the flat of his palm and his back up against the bathroom door, since it's the most private place in the apartment.

"She misses you," he continues. "And I know she misses the city. Homesickness I understand, and winter fatigue too, but this is ..." This is something he feels like he should be able to fix; everyone has the power to save themselves, but sometimes they just need reminding, and Eduardo has no idea how to do that. Amy got him to back down from a ledge once, surely there's _something_ he can do to help her now.

"Do you think maybe she's angry at herself?" Dustin suggests, as serious as Eduardo has ever heard him. "Like, she starts feeling down and then she starts feeling guilty because she doesn't think she has the right to be depressed because she's, you know -- she's always just kind of been blessed when it comes to her family, and schooling, and money, and she gets angry because she feels depressed anyway?"

"And it's a whole nasty cycle," Eduardo finishes, nodding, and runs his hand through his hair.

Amy _always_ has been able to make them feel better. Like a Pez dispenser or a devout Catholic ready to recite the Nicene Creed, she has a dozen or more feel-good self-esteem boosters or excellent pieces of advice that she can just regurgitate on demand like she memorized them. 

But her issues are as deeply rooted as theirs, and just as hard to fight. Amelia Ritter believes that everyone else deserves more than she does.

Dustin continues, "The first time we met, she told me that everyone is _worth_ it and everyone's allowed to feel whatever they want to feel, but --"

"-- but she doesn't believe it for herself."

"Right."

Eduardo sighs, letting his head fall back against the bathroom door for a second before he gets his feet under him and pushes himself up. "Thanks for your help, man," he goes. "I'm going to go microwave a burrito and then I'm going to sit on the sofa with Amy, and we'll work in companionable and proximal quiet, because it's the best I know how to offer."

"Yeah," Dustin goes distractedly. And, "you know, I've been trying to decide something for a long time, and I think you just made it easier to make a plan. Do you still have a minute?"

Eduardo lets go of the door handle. "Yeah, what's up?"

 

-

They give Dustin the corner address, and they cluster together on the seventh floor landing with a pair of binoculars, peering out the window where the old woman in the stairside apartment can sometimes be found with a lawn chair and a book, waiting for the moonrise. She's not here today, so it's just Amy and Eduardo, pressed up against the pane of glass and watching the familiar shape of Dustin Moskowitz get out of a taxi cab at the end of the street.

"He brought the dogs!" Amy hisses, startled. The cab driver stacks two animal carrier crates on top of each other, and they quiver excitedly with the movements of their occupants.

Eduardo knows Dustin brought the dogs, because earlier that week, he sneakily paid the pet deposit and intercepted the receipt before Amy could see it. She thinks Dustin's just here for a visit.

The taxi pulls away, leaving Dustin to glance from one nondescript brownstone building to another. His hair's longer since the last time Eduardo laid eyes on him, bangs dangling into his eyes and the ends sticking out from underneath his sock monkey hat, and his parka looks brand new. Through the binoculars, they watch him turn around in a slow circle, frowning, before he pulls out his phone.

A moment later, Amy's lights up in her hand with an incoming call from _Your Future Boyfriend,_ which is how Dustin entered his number into her phone the first time they met, and Amy's never changed it to anything else.

She exchanges a gleeful look with Eduardo, then lifts it to her ear, cupping her hand around the mouthpiece to make a Darth Vader voice.

"Dustin Anthony Moskowitz," she says, and Eduardo lifts the binoculars up in time to see Dustin's head jerk around, like the disembodied voice in his ear was something he could physically trace with his eyes. "Your friends are safe, but if you ever want to see them again, you'll follow our instructions."

Dustin's mouth opens, his expression perplexed, and Amy cuts him off quickly.

"Don't speak! We don't know who else might be watching you. Two meters south of where you're standing, there's an arrow chalked into the sidewalk. If you see it, take off your ridiculous hat."

The little figure turns in a slow circle, and then away goes the sock monkey, darkly ginger hair frothing in its wake.

"Good. Follow the arrows," says Amy, and she hangs up.

They linger at the window long enough to ascertain that Dustin's coming in the right direction, wheeling the dog crates and his suitcase behind him, before they push away and race back down the hall. The arrows will lead him on a scavenger hunt down the block, through the alley, in through the freight delivery entrance, up the elevator, and straight to their front door, where they've left a key swinging on the hook right under their name plates. 

Eduardo steals a sideways glance at Amy when they shut the door behind them; her eyes are sparkling, color high in her cheeks. She looks happy.

_Give a girl some sidewalk chalk,_ Eduardo thinks, and answers her smile with one of his own.

They're on him the second he comes through the door, Amy and Eduardo at once, one for each of Dustin's snaking, eager arms to yank into a crushingly tight hug. They rock back and forth in the entryway as Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2 whine excitedly in their carriers, Eduardo with his face smothered against Dustin's neck and Dustin trying to talk through a mouthful of Amy's hair, saying, "Why was all that even _necessary?"_

"Where's your spirit of adventure?" Amy wants to know, laughing, before she tilts herself up onto tiptoe and kisses Dustin hello.

Eduardo endures twenty seconds of tongue going on uncomfortably close to his face before he exaggeratedly starts mouthing at Dustin's neck, slobbering with enthusiasm just to make him yelp and yank away.

"Wardo!" Dustin protests, wiping away Eduardo's spit. "Wait your turn, _geez."_

The embrace breaks, but Dustin doesn't let them go very far, one hand curled around Amy's waist and the other hooked loosely on Eduardo's hip.

"So," he goes with a big satisfied sigh that Eduardo can feel inflate against his ribs. "What have I missed?"

 

-

It's a three-room apartment, scarcely marketable in that quaint, dirty way you can only really find in Manhattan. With two people, it was cozy, but with the addition of one excitable Dustin and two excitable labradors, it suddenly becomes exceedingly cramped, as too many bodies try to occupy the same space.

Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2 _insist_ on standing exactly where it is most inconvenient for them to stand, which is usually right underfoot as Eduardo makes himself presentable in the morning, and he gives up finding time to make his own breakfast and just starts stealing spoonfuls of cereal from Dustin, who sits on top of the counter in the kitchenette and looks amused every time Eduardo stops by for a bite of cornflakes in progressive stages of dress.

Amy unapologetically skips two days of class to drag Dustin around the city, doing the tourist thing, and for the first time since he started his job, Eduardo leaves Wall Street at 5pm exactly so that he can join them, feeling a little like an overeager third wheel. 

"Please tell me this means you're finally getting laid," says Irene nosily, propping her chin up on her hands and watching Eduardo rearrange things inside his briefcase.

"Fuck off," says Eduardo cheerfully, because the last time he pursued a girl, it turned out she was already dating one of the people Eduardo admired most in the world, and he's gotten really good at ignoring Amy's legs in shorts and the sunshine-bright look on her face whenever her daily act of kindness is a success, because he values her friendship more than he feels like dwelling on the fact that he really wants to be her boyfriend. 

In a bid for self-preservation, he invested in a very good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He can put up with a lot of sins of living in narrow quarters with too many people, but he draws the line at willingly listening to his friends have reunion sex.

Irene cups her hands around her mouth and calls after him, "If they don't make you pancakes on the morning after, don't keep them!"

"Good _night,_ Irene!" Eduardo calls back pointedly. 

"With chocolate chips!" she choruses, and it's only when he's descending into the subway that he realizes she pluralized her pronoun.

(That's Irene Urbandale, and at this moment in time, she's 24 years old. Five years from now, she'll be arrested on suspicion of felony money laundering and detained in a detention center in the Cayman Islands, and for approximately twelve seconds during her interrogation, she'll think about implicating Eduardo Saverin as one of her partners, because it wouldn't be difficult to believe that all Wall Street economists are shady creatures, and wasn't he already semi-famous for that whole nasty Facebook lawsuit? It would certainly take the heat off Irene, and the only thing Irene cares about is getting a shorter sentence, because she has a daughter to get home to.

But then she'll remember the look on Eduardo's face the day he quit, and how in the days leading up to it, he left work earlier and earlier even when it really hurt his profits, too busy smiling through phone calls during his lunch break to eat much, and how he arrived at work a little more disheveled each time, like he cared more about the people he was leaving than the people he was arriving to see, and then she'll just casually forget to mention his name.

Call it an act of kindness.)

 

-

It's been two years since Eduardo sat down for lunch with Trevor and his friends from Harvard Law and they told him what happened to him was a criminal offense, but in the March of 2007, Eduardo tells his lawyers to serve the papers.

And there. It's done. 

It's officially out of his hands, all laid out in writing: Eduardo will meet Mark head-on in federal court and he's not even going to pretend it's about the money, or the shares, or anything other than Eduardo _keeping_ his promise, because _somebody_ should.

But he's never going to be free of Mark. He's has two years to realize this and come to terms with it.

Amy likes to say that everybody is a patchwork of all the people whose opinions they could never shake, the good and the bad, and so some ghost of Mark Zuckerberg is always going to follow him, legally and socially. There's always going to be that phantom limb of a memory, staying his hand before he signs a contract without reading, something that flinches inside of him whenever he overhears "Facebook" and everything connected with it.

Eduardo can't sue his own self-worth and dignity back out of Mark, and he knows it, so he'll take the shares and the respect he's due as a cofounder instead.

The lawsuit goes live, and without needing to be told, Dustin goes out of his way to keep Eduardo busy that day. They take Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2 and go to the corner flower shop, where they buy a dozen half-price red roses leftover from Valentine's Day and ride the subways back and forth, tucking the roses into the unsuspecting backpack or open purse or back pocket and then stepping out at the next stop to avoid getting caught.

By the time they make it back to the apartment after the last rose is handed out, Eduardo's feet are killing him and he's out of breath from laughing too much. He goes into his room and collapses face-down onto his bed, and groans when Dustin flops down next to him, heavier than the dogs and possessing sharper elbows, which manage to find Eduardo's kidneys, no problem.

When he tells him this, Dustin just noses in pointedly, saying, " _woof!"_ and looking at him soulfully until Eduardo rolls over onto his back and covers those big brown eyes with his hand, saying, "what are you _doing,_ Dustin?"

He means it affectionately, but the moment changes before the words are even out, and Dustin goes still against him, under his hand, like he'd asked something else entirely.

They don't say anything for a long moment. Dustin's fingers dance across the waist of Eduardo's jeans, drumming out the chorus to some syrupy pop song he vaguely recognizes. This is the first time since Thanksgiving that anyone other than Eduardo or the dogs have been in this bed, he realizes abruptly -- Ricardo, who loves ladies even more than music and whose life probably does revolve around the next time he gets to speak to one, would probably die of shame if Eduardo ever told him that, but Eduardo doesn't miss sex enough to bother being ashamed.

Hazy and comfortable, Eduardo tucks his hands under his chin and studies Dustin; the soft hollows under his cheekbones and the sharp Roman slope to his nose, and he hears himself blurt out, "Did you ever tell Mark?"

Dustin blinks, eyes crossing in order to focus on him.

"About the pills?" Eduardo elaborates.

"No," is the immediate reply, voice gone quiet. "... do you think it makes me a bad person that it was less to spare his feelings and more to spare my own?"

"No," Eduardo answers, because he remembers the way Mark had looked at him and sneered _I'll remember that next time I'm overwhelmed by the shallow vapidity of my life_ like it was easier than facing the uncomfortable truth. He doesn't want to know what Mark would have thrown in Dustin's face.

Dustin nods, and wraps his arm around Eduardo, snuggling in.

This is how Amy finds them when she comes in through the door a half-hour later, cooing a greeting at the two Dumb Things who click over to say hello. Eduardo hears her footsteps pause in the bedroom doorway, and neither he nor Dustin have to look up to know the expression that's going to be all over her face.

"Boys," she says fondly.

"Shhh," goes Dustin, the syllable mushed up against Eduardo's collarbone. "Don't judge. Come here and try this, it's so fantastic." He shifts, leisurely stretching his limbs out against Eduardo's before settling back in, smacking his lips, like he's a baby animal and not a twenty-two year old entrepreneur.

"I'm not a human heating pad," Eduardo complains, but he twists his head and extends his free arm towards Amy, who toes out of her ballet flats, dropping her backpack to the floor and peeling out of her socks before she comes to sink into the mattress with the luxurious noise familiar to anyone who has ever loved their bed so much they never wanted to leave.

She settles into the space right by Eduardo's heart like she was meant to fit there, and, impulsive, Eduardo presses a kiss across her nose and then another to Dustin's forehead.

His chest is skinny, and flat, and probably not very comfortable, and he doesn't have the broadest shoulders, but they're big enough for this.

 

-

The next day, Gretchen calls him to tell him they've been served legal notice from an entirely unexpected direction: Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra are asking him to be the key witness in their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg.

"It might not go further than the deposition phase, since I don't think they even know _what_ they want anymore, just that they want Mark to pay for something," she tells him, after he finds his desk chair and sinks into it, heart constricting tight inside the cavity of his chest. "But you're going to have to be there for that, at least."

"We didn't plan the timing of that very well, did we?" he says.

She sighs. "No," she agrees. Gretchen has never been anything but unfailingly honest with him, and she lets him go with a, "We'll see how we can use this to our advantage, Eduardo."

He thumbs the End Call button, pressing his forehead into the corner of his phone and wishing, for one fraction of a moment, that there was a way to reach out through time and pull his own lawsuit back, save it for some other time, when it won't seem like Eduardo's tag-teaming with the Winklevoss twins to gang up on Mark. 

But what's done is done, and here's Eduardo Saverin, always stuck playing the pawn in someone else's chess game.

Dumb Thing 1 slinks into the room and, upon cluing into his mood, comes over to put his muzzle on his leg, whining softly. Eduardo rubs his gingerbread-colored nose like it's a good luck charm, and Dumb Thing 1 beats at the air with his tail, looking concerned.

When he goes out into the main room and tells Amy and Dustin, Amy murmurs, "oh, _balls,"_ and offers him the wine glass she has dangling from one hand. He sinks into the cushions next to her and downs it gratefully, grimacing as the alcohol burns straight through his nose. On her other side, Dustin rolls the hem of his shirt between his forefinger and thumb, his expression downturned around his eyes.

"I'm sorry I can't help you," he says. His voice is small. "Against Mark, I mean. With the lawsuit. I just ... I _can't."_

"I know," says Eduardo quickly, his skin crawling at the thought of wielding Dustin's testimony as a weapon. There's got to be some kind of legal deterrent against using mutual friends of both the plaintiff and the defendant -- conflict of interest, or something similar?

Gretchen had brought up deposing Dustin exactly once. _No,_ Eduardo had bit out, and she paused for a beat before moving on.

Amy, however, is thinking more along a practical line. "Is this going to make things difficult for you when you go home?" she asks, nudging at Dustin with her knee. "You're basically, like, consorting with the enemy here," she flashes a slim grin to show she's joking. "Eating his food, dating his roommate, mooching room and board. I can't imagine that's going to make you very popular."

"I'm just suing the CEO of his company, it's not the Revenge of the Sith," Eduardo says dryly. "I doubt anyone's really going to care."

And then Dustin says, "I turned in my notice."

Amy stills. Eduardo can practically hear the creak in her neck when she turns to look at him. 

"What?" she says.

"Before," Dustin fumbles over his words, starting and stopping like this is the start of a speech, and he's completely forgotten it. "Before -- like. Well, before I came out here." 

Amy makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat, something that's half disbelief and half dawning understanding.

"It was going to be a surprise," Eduardo offers, recovering enough to come to the rescue. "We were going to tell you when your spring break came up. There was _supposed_ to be this big balloon party and a 'guess who's moving in?' kind of thing," Eduardo leans around Amy to give Dustin a pointed kind of look.

"Sorry," Dustin goes, not really sounding it.

"Well, yeah, I'm not stupid," Amy interjects. "I knew something was up. There were any number of people who would have willingly watched the dumb dogs for you, you didn't have to bring them here, and of course you're welcome to move into our apartment anytime," she gives a flippant wave of her hand, like that goes without saying. "But _Dustin._ Your job?"

"You know I never wanted to work at Facebook my whole life," he replies, and, fidgeting under their scrutiny, pushes himself to his feet. He brushes his palms off on his thighs, shoulders strung up tense. "And I've wanted to move back to the east coast since the very first summer in California. Now .... now just seemed like a good time."

"Honey," Amy starts, her brows pinching with concern. She gets to her feet too. "Are you sure that's the right decision --"

"Yes," goes Dustin instantly. "And it took me two years to work up the courage to do it."

"And leaving Mark alone --" Eduardo begins, unable to help it.

And then Dustin explodes.

"You know what!" comes bursting out of him, like it was torn away by the roots, and Eduardo almost swallows his tongue, because Dustin's swinging on them, his hands flung wide. "That's my decision and I _don't regret it."_

He paces a tight circle, back and forth between the coffee table and the couch; Eduardo has to tuck his knees up to get them out of the way. There's something like a storm brewing on Dustin's face, something that's been there for a long time.

He starts talking again. "I could never just _choose._ That was always the problem, wasn't it? Nobody ever gave me a _choice,_ did any of you stop to notice that?"

Amy makes an aborted movement, like she's going in to touch him, but Dustin jerks away from her, a violent twitch of his shoulders like he's on the end of a marionette.

"Oh, that's _Dustin,"_ he snarls out, sounding like a small animal, backed in a corner. "It's always Dustin, he just does what needs to be done. But does anyone ever _ask_ Dustin? No! And then everyone's so fucking surprised when Dustin can't make a choice!" His mouth makes this horrible, wobbly shape around the word. "Stand up for himself, or be what other people want him to be?"

"Dustin ..." Eduardo tries.

Dustin shakes his head. "All those fucking choices, and it was always taking for granted which way I'd go, but I had no idea," he whispers, looking Eduardo dead-on. "Side with you or side with Mark? Harvard or Facebook? Kill myself or not? Kiss Amy or ... or kiss you?" Eduardo jerks at that, startled, and Amy sucks in an audible breath, but Dustin swipes at his own face, furious, and there's a burning in his eyes that's undeniable. "I could never fucking _choose."_

His voice cracks right down the middle, and Eduardo can't stand another moment.

He doesn't know what he's going to do until the second he does it, and he surges forward, grabbing Dustin by the face and unceremoniously hauling him in for a kiss.

It mashes briefly, dry and uneven, before Eduardo angles it better and Dustin reciprocates, their lower lips sliding together. 

Then Dustin makes this _noise,_ and he clutches at him, fingers digging into his shoulders, and his mouth opens against Eduardo's, hot and wet and searing like he's trying to imprint the shape of his mouth onto Eduardo's, and there's something about the taste of it that has Eduardo thinking he might understand what they mean when they say your knees go so weak it feels like they're bending backwards.

"Fuck you," Dustin mumbles, pulling back far enough to speak. His eyes lid, and he sways against Eduardo. "I'm trying to be angry here."

Eduardo locks eyes with Amy through the halo of Dustin's hair, standing there with her arms folded and her weight shifted onto one hip, like she isn't sure what to do, and there are a number of interesting things on her face.

"So don't," Eduardo says lowly, holding Amy's gaze as she inclines her head, very slightly. "Don't choose."

Dustin recoils some, making a questioning sound low in his throat, but Eduardo holds him by the elbows.

Amy steps up, planting her hand flat against the breadth of Dustin's shoulder. Eduardo isn't sure which one of them it is, but one of them says, "We have more than enough room in our hearts," and Dustin breathes out shakily, like that's something he can believe.

 

-

The mattress winds up on the floor, along with all the sofa cushions in a makeshift attempt to make a bed big enough, leaving the skeletons of the bed frame and the sofa shoved up against the walls. They tried to hold it together with a patchwork of sheets, but then they just messed it up again.

When Eduardo drowses back into awareness, long before he needs to be awake, he finds Amy has reacqusitioned one of the cushions for the sofa and has her laptop open across her thighs. She's wearing only her panties; the open laptop screen covers her breasts and the rolls of her stomach from view, but he knows they're there and he knows what they look like. She worries at her bottom lip, eyes flicking across the screen, so he just watches her for a long moment. On the mattress next to him him, Dustin is curled on his side, the wings of his shoulders hunched up in sleep.

He lifts a fingertip to the nape of Dustin's neck. Very slowly, he draws down the knobs of his spine, not quite touching the skin but coming so close he swears the hairs on the back of Dustin's neck rise to meet him.

They locked the dogs in the bathroom, where they whined pathetically at the door until they got used to it; faintly, he can hear the clattering of dog tags as one of them clambers into the shower stall.

"You know what the solution is, don't you?"

Amy's voice comes suddenly, making him start even though it's pitched low, private. She sets her laptop to the side, into the naked upholstery, before she slides back down to the ground. The tag is sticking out of the back of her panties.

"Run away with us," she says.

Eduardo chuckles, shifting to make room for her as she crawls up next to him, suspending herself with her hands planted in the mattress. "Right," he goes, flicking her hair away from his face. "We'll steal off in the middle of the night. Tell no one where we're going. Defect to Canada or something."

She smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners, but then she murmurs, "I'm serious," and leans over him. Her mouth quivers, unsteady, as it forms around the words. "Run away with us, Eduardo."

"Amy," he says shortly, still wanting to laugh. "Come on, this --"

"Do it," her eyes are burning, silvery bright. "Sue him, _take_ the money he owes you, run away and live your life. Put it behind you and run with _us._ We love you," and her voice breaks here, vowels coming out lost and wanting. "We _love_ you."

"I ..." Eduardo turns his head on the pillow, and finds that Dustin has turned over. His eyes are open and watchful in the dark.

 

-

In the morning, they make pancakes. 

 

 

-

 

_**Recipe 5**_

**5\. coq au vin avec creme**   
_Translating to "chicken in wine with cream," coq au vin avec creme is perhaps the simplest dish for a chef new to French cuisine to try. The versatility and flexibility of this dish is, of course, the main key for the inexperienced cook._

_**1.** Place chicken breasts in a pan and coat with a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, and seasoning of your choice (suggestions include rosemary, thyme, bacon, and/or chili flakes.) Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Heat oven to 430 and roast for 20 minutes.  
 **2.** Add 1 1/14 cup white wine. Be liberal. Return to oven for another 20 minutes.  
 **3.** While the chicken is cooking, sautee some mushrooms and garlic, again to taste. Make mashed potatoes, whip with a knob of butter, 1/2 cup milk, and pinch of salt.  
 **4.** Serve the potatoes/mushroom mix and add the chicken on top._

 

It takes three hours to get to Tours from the airport if you go by bus, give or take an hour or so, depending on how excruciating the traffic is coming out of Paris. 

They sit for twenty minutes at the toll, and Eduardo leans his forehead against the bus window, pulling his legs up onto the seat with him. The bus idles, rumbling underneath him, making the pane of glass vibrate against his skull. On the other side of the toll booths, the noise reduction walls are covered in layers of graffiti too numerous to make out individual signatures. 

He closes his eyes and lets the rising sun warm them, steadily breaching over the walls, a coal-colored glow on the insides of his eyelids.

He wakes up again when the bus groans with effort, turning into a parking spot at a rest point. The driver cranks the door open and calls back, " _quinze minute!"_ before he drops down the steps, tapping a pack of cigarettes against the heel of his hand.

Eduardo stretches out, uncurling his arms above his head and his legs out under the seat in front of him, before he gets up. There's a tourist family clustered a couple rows ahead of him, and he lingers in the aisle while they orient themselves and the nest they've made of their belongings. The wire connecting the youngest kid's Discman to his headphones snags on the arm rest as he goes by, and absently, Eduardo reaches out to unhook it.

The boy flashes him a quick grin, stuffing the Discman into the kangaroo pouch of his sweatshirt. "Thanks, mister!" he chirps, and then corrects himself, "I mean, um. Mercy. Uh, _merci,_ yeah."

Eduardo smiles back, amused.

(The boy's name is Charlie Dockweiler, and at this moment in time, he's twelve years old. His screenname on Neopets is Villain1995 and he's thinking about asking people to start referring to him as Charles, because Charles Dockweiler sounds like someone out of James Bond. He doesn't think anything at all about the man who follows him down the steps of the bus, other than his hair swoops out from his forehead like the back end of a duck.)

Walking from one end of the parking lot to the other to get the circulation going in his legs, Eduardo goes back to linger by the front of the bus. They're well into the countryside of central France; he shades his eyes, looking out over the poppy fields, the bright red heads bobbing in the breeze. He can just make out a farmhouse on a distant hill.

The driver stands close-by, cigarette dangling between his fingers. When Eduardo catches his eye, he tilts his head and asks something with a smoker's rasp. He has eyes the yellow-green color of a summer storm.

Eduardo just smiles politely for a beat, before the words register in his mind and he can pick out the important components. "Where" and the "you" form of a verb were both present -- _where are you going,_ maybe? He should definitely know this. He's bilingual, and has been since the day he first learned to talk, but it's like his brain froze after the age of five. He's atrocious at picking up new languages. German was his lowest grade in high school, and sure, Portuguese shares the same Romantic language root as French, but it's more of a hindrance than a help, because he just wants to switch back to what he knows.

The driver bends down to drag his cigarette through the gravel, tucking the remaining half back into the box.

He looks at Eduardo like he expects an answer, so Eduardo casts his eyes out across the poppy fields and answers, "Tours. _Chez ..._ ah, _chez moi._ Home," he adds, quieter. "I'm going home."

 

-

On the brochure, Tours is a moderately-sized city on the banks of the Loire with a history that dates back to the tenth century. The houses that were built in the Dark Ages are still standing even today, clustered around the main square in the shadow of a gothic cathedral. It's a major selling point for the tourists that stop by on their way down to the coast or up to Paris.

The sidewalks in Eduardo's neighborhood are so narrow there's only room for one person walking at a time, unless you turn sideways to slip by each other like minnows, and the buildings are so close together that the sun only touches the puddles in the street at high noon, and the tenants can string their laundry across to each other's windows.

Above his head, white bedsheets billow with a hard wind, catching against the blue sky easy as artwork. A car snakes its way down the street, passing close enough to Eduardo that he feels the breeze it leaves in its wake. 

The twin boys from the apartment below theirs have a complicated set-up of Pokemon cards spread out on the stoop, and they frown down at them with intense concentration.

Amy had to have been looking out the window at the exact right moment to have seen him coming down the sidewalk, because the gate to their apartment building unlatches and she spills out onto the sidewalk in a hurry, barefoot and in jogging shorts and practically having to leap over the twins not to disturb their game.

Clapping eyes on him immediately, she squeals, "You're _back!"_ and Eduardo manages to set his briefcase and garment bag down in time to catch her as she launches herself at him. Her legs go around his waist as he swings her around in a circle, her "you're back, you're _back,_ you're back"s chorusing loud in his ear.

He sets her back down, close enough that their toes overlap, and her fingers clamp down on his shoulders, holding him still so she can frown at him with sudden realization. "Why are you back?" she demands. "You're back early! You're not supposed to be back yet."

"Right," Eduardo acknowledges. She has hair caught in her mouth, so he pulls it loose and tucks it behind her ear. "The depositions have been suspended for fourteen days pending someone bail Mark out of jail, so I figured that was enough time to come home."

Amy's eyebrows leap spiritedly up her forehead.

Eduardo grins at her, because this is going to have mileage and he knows it. "Mark got arrested for assaulting someone at a corporate event. Apparently the guy made some racist crack about his girlfriend, so Mark punched him."

"Mark _punched_ someone? Like, the dude was actually hurt?" Amy goes, incredulous.

Coming up behind her at a much more sedate pace, Dustin asks simultaneously, "Wait, someone threw a racial slur at Christy?"

Amy twists her head around, making a very loud and pointed noise low in her throat. Realizing his slip, Dustin claps a hand to his mouth in horror, eyes going comically wide.

Eduardo looks between them, amused, and shifts his hold on Amy so that he can hook his index finger into the loose collar of Dustin's cotton shirt, the one that says "Zombies Love Nerds With Brains," pulling him in to press a kiss to his mouth in the middle of the street. "I think it's funny," he murmurs, as Dustin cants into him for a longer kiss. "How you two live under the impression that I somehow _don't_ know the CEO of Facebook is dating my ex."

"It's just funny because she's taller than he is," Dustin returns, mulish.

"Trust me, I'm perfectly okay with it. They're so alike that they work so much better with each other than either of them did with me."

"We're glad you're home," Amy inserts diplomatically, pressing her face against the shoulder of his suit, which is wrinkled from travel.

"She missed you," Dustin tattles. "I don't have the arm strength to hold her up against a wall or carry her to bed, it's pathetic," he demonstrates, flexing his arms and pulling the corners of his mouth down when they don't bunch up like Popeye's. "A girl's got needs, you know."

"Glad to know the real reason you love me," Eduardo says to Amy, who claps a hand over his mouth and murmurs _shut your face,_ her voice so laden with affection it's like she's saying something else entirely.

 

-

The superintendent, an elderly woman named Rosemarie, always has lipstick on her teeth and her head wobbles near-constantly whenever she's upright.

Fifty years ago, she married an American pilot with a handlebar mustache -- this is usually the very first piece of information she volunteers about herself. They were married for two years before he died: how, Eduardo still has no idea, but there's a real kind of pain that creases the corners of Rosemarie's walnut face that tells him the memory of it is still searingly tragic. She never married again. 

She speaks English on the level that Eduardo speaks French, which she uses mostly just to ask Eduardo wistful questions about New York City: she has the kind of romantic idea about the city that bears absolutely no resemblance to the reality. Amy, who speaks French so fluently the words sound like water coming out of her mouth, has to come to the rescue a lot, or Eduardo and Rosemarie will just stand there forever, talking past each other.

She knows all her tenants by the sound of their footsteps on the stoop, so by the time he gets the gate unlatched, she's standing in her office door, watching him with a smirk curling the corner of her mouth. Sometimes in the summer, she'll come to hover in the doorway wearing nothing but a sheer pair of nylons, suspended by garter belts, and absolutely nothing else. Rosemarie's sagging breasts are the kind of thing Eduardo could have lived a long and happy life without ever seeing. 

She just clucks her tongue and makes a comment about prudish Americans who blush too much. 

Dustin calls her "Rosemary and her drying herbs," which doesn't make sense, but the name sticks.

The apartment building they live in overlooks the street on one side, the courtyard and sundial on the other, and has a roof the pigeons like to sun themselves on in the lazy part of the afternoon. The tiles are streaked permanently white, and their cooing gets so loud at times that most of Eduardo's afternoon naps often feature an indistinct sensation of being suffocated in feathers, since the bed is right underneath the window. 

It's the perfect place to nap, sun-warmed and rumpled, and the perfect place to tug each other down to the sounds of people milling on the sidewalk below, a breeze stirring along their bare backs. It's the perfect place to sleep, too tangled in each other to get up easily.

Eduardo's favorite place in the world is probably their bed.

When they first rented the place, Rosemarie handed over the key, looking from Amy to Dustin to Eduardo and back again. She smirked in that way of hers and said something in a quiet undertone. It was the first and last time she ever complimented them.

"She says we're all too stupidly nice," Amy translated. "And we're going to get grotesquely taken advantage of by everyone we'll ever meet."

"I think we'll deal," said Dustin, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his nose in her shoulder. Eduardo smiled at them from across the room, his heart feeling two sizes too large for the ribs that bound it.

 

-

The language barrier is a bit of a bitch sometimes, and if he's away from home too long, Eduardo finds himself getting homesick for the sound of his own language. It's an odd feeling. ("Only you, Thork," Trevor sighs, the first time the two of them try that new video-chat program together, Skype or whatever it's called.)

Someone once told them that the French believe the perfect breast is one that can fit into a wineglass -- the martini kind, obviously, not the tulip-shaped ones. Naturally, that meant they all wound up in the kitchen five minutes later, needing to test this hypothesis by attaching their wineglasses to their chests like toilet plungers.

"Hm," Amy had said. She was too big for hers.

Dustin and Eduardo, being neither anatomically female nor the Rock, didn't even come close to filling theirs.

"Well," Dustin had sighed. "There goes our hope of citizenship."

Their next-door neighbor is a young Iraq veteran with very blue eyes, who likes to sit out on the landing, folding little paper origami animals for the twin boys who live downstairs. He's working on a novel -- a hodge-podge collection of stories from fellow soldiers of his who didn't come home. Everyone is a patchwork quilt of the people they love, the people they hate, the opinions they could never quite shake, and the stories they told to other people.

The soldier has dozens and dozens of strange, silly, and sometimes heartbreaking stories he collected over in the Middle East.

"Why did you volunteer?" Eduardo asked him once, because to him, the war's still relatively new and, like most Americans, he wasn't really sure what was going on or why they were doing it.

The neighbor had shrugged back at him. "Your boys in the government asked, so I went. Everybody should have somebody to stand with them when they need it. I want to live in a world where that's the only thing we do, no explanation needed."

He says things like that a lot, because of the novel, like somehow he's become a channel for the men and women he served with; all the things he's trying to remember about them, the important and not-so-important bits of themselves that they couldn't recognize in themselves but could be recognized by those around them.

"Everybody's just waiting for everybody else to get their heads out of their asses," he says.

"Isn't that the truth," Eduardo murmurs back, thinking of the war first, and then thinking of _What do you mean, get left behind?_

He met them while they were standing in the middle of the apartment courtyard by the bubbling cherub fountain, surrounded by walls and the curling iron trellises on the windows; Dustin and Eduardo each had their arms wrapped around each other like an awkward three-legged race, Amy sandwiched under their armpits, her fingers hooked through their belt loops for balance.

Catching him watching them, curious, she smiled and said warmly, "Hello, I'm Amy. This is Eduardo, and this is Dustin."

"She saved our lives," said Eduardo by way of introduction, feeling Dustin's emphatic nod go all the way through the places they were connected.

"I did not," Amy said by rote. And then, even quieter, she murmured, "They saved mine."

 

-

At times, it feels like he's been stuck in the bureaucratic cogs for so long that he doesn't even remember _why_ he's suing Mark in the first place. The justice system of America moves so infinitesimally slow; this lawsuit's been the background hum to Eduardo's life for almost three years, and they haven't even gone to _court_ yet.

At one point, Eduardo just stopped in his tracks and said, "What am I _doing?_ This isn't even going to -- what do I think I'm going to _accomplish,_ he's too powerful now to ever --"

Next to him on the boardwalk overlooking the Loire, city street lights gleaming through the evening fog like fireflies, watching Dustin sit on the wall and do quick five-minute sketches of the passerby and thinking idly that it's not long before they're allowed to get Dumb Thing 1 and Dumb Thing 2 out of international quarantine, Amy reached out and flicked his ear with her fingernail. 

"Shut up," she said, giving him her most deeply unimpressed look as he rubbed his stinging ear, scowling at her. "His shit stinks as much as yours does, okay, and one day, he'll be so old that when he laughs, the tears run down his leg. And then you're going to feel ridiculous that you ever let him get to you like this."

Which is ... actually one of the most useful pieces of advice he's ever gotten.

It certainly helps him through the Winklevosses's deposition, standing at the water pitcher and listening to Mark bridle and snarl and quip across the table and thinking, _someday, you'll be an old gasbag with farts that smell like garbanzo beans and then what the fuck will your condescension mean,_ before he had to duck his head to hide his grin.

The thing is -- he can forgive Mark for the dilution. That's not the hard part, since he half-saw it coming, anyway, and was really just waiting for the guillotine to fall since the start: maybe even as long ago as Caribbean night, when he unceremoniously and excitedly dragged Mark into his news about the Phoenix Club like Mark wasn't just about to deliver the most important speech of his life.

So, yes, Eduardo can understand the business bit of it, and whatever, they both sucked as partners and as friends, and isn't it a good thing that it's not the last time they all get to act like jerks?

Mark's not an asshole because he willingly cut Eduardo out of the company he helped found. He's an asshole because of _it's probably a diversity thing_ and he's an asshole because of _I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm feeling selfish and overwhelmed by the shallow vapidity of my life._

That's what Eduardo will never forgive him for.

And maybe ... maybe someday.

Maybe someday he'll meet Mark on his own merit, as a man with his own accomplishments, backed by the people who love him.

Maybe then they can talk.

 

-

(What he doesn't know, and what he will never know, is that Mark Zuckerberg tried to apologize to Eduardo Saverin exactly once. 

Not because he thought he was wrong, but because his _need_ to talk to Eduardo the way they used to back when they were best friends momentarily outweighed his pride in his decisions. It was a moment so flooded with _purpose_ that he felt lit up from the inside, the way people do after reading a reality-altering book, or after watching a really good movie, or eating the best breakfast on a beautiful day. 

Mark pushed himself away from his chair and started across the room with the full intention of _talking_ to Eduardo.

But Eduardo, with the instinctive yank in his gut familiar to everyone who's ever seen someone they _really_ didn't want to talk to in the hallway, turned away and pulled Amy into a conversation with a blinding non-sequitr, because it was just that kind of day and he just did _not_ want to talk to Mark.

The moment passed.

It didn't come around again.)

 

-

It's not perfect, and it's never easy.

It takes time to find a balance, because they're always going to want to play favorites, they're always going to unintentionally make one of them feel like the others' third wheel. 

There are days when the only thing Eduardo wants is to wake up to Amy's legs traipsing back and forth across his field of vision, the old wooden floors creaking under her weight as she waters the plants on their windowsill out of the small-boob wineglass, her hair mussed in the back and a hickey standing out plum-colored on the high arch of her neck; Dustin's presence is almost superfluous to that vision. 

And there are days when he's almost annoyed with Amy for not having been there at Harvard, because it'd just be nicer if she could understand the jokes Dustin and Eduardo have without them having to explain it to her, like that time Dustin fondled Eduardo's backside in full view of the Bible group handing out _Are You Going to Hell_ pamphlets on the steps of the Harvard business college.

And he _knows_ there's years of history between Dustin and Amy that he'll never be a part of.

They are completely at ease with each other. Amy falls asleep in Dustin's Threadless hoodies, even in the hot part of summer, the wrists stretched out from where she's always shoving them up her arms, and there's something so _comfortable_ about the way Dustin props his chin on his hands and tells Amy that the unhappy man who sells stamps to tourists at _La Poste_ really, really, really likes Sugar Babies candy, so maybe they should fill his mailbox with them, just for fun.

"Like the ballet teacher from Pier 39 who really liked Neco wafers, remember how they all poured out onto her feet at once?" he goes, and Amy looks up from her itinerary and smiles, and Eduardo feels the exclusion clench hard at his gut.

He's just ... not as comfortable. He wants to be, but he doubts he's ever going to shake that initial instinct to politely look away whenever Amy slips her bra out her sleeve at the end of a long day, or when Dustin comes out of the shower with everything hanging loose. Rosemarie is right, he kind of got into the habit of being a prude.

It's not just him, either. Sex isn't exactly the equal, three-way act they all assumed it would be going into it.

For one, Dustin does not like oral sex.

Eduardo doesn't actually mind being on his knees, either with his hands on Dustin's thighs or Amy's knee crooked over his shoulder, but there's something about putting his mouth on somebody else's genitals that makes Dustin cringe full-body, gag, and pull back to say, "Nope, can't do it, you _pee_ out of those things."

He likes receiving it just fine, which is probably part of the problem, and Eduardo and Amy joke about how he's just trying to get out of reciprocation for a day or two before they clue in that _no,_ Dustin actually really does feel guilty that he's creeped out by the thought of giving head and that they're missing something vital from their sex lives because there's something he can't perform.

Eduardo's always considered Dustin's thick skin to be one of his greatest evolutionary advantages, but it takes a long time for it to sink in that whatever he does and does not want to do in the bedroom is perfectly fine. Amy and Eduardo love him, they love him something awful, and he needs to know that's not conditional on how he is in bed.

Because for them, feeling left out is something they take more seriously than a heart attack.

The important thing to remember is: what brings them together is far, far, far more important than what sets them apart.

Amy's talking about getting her PhD here. 

Dustin's getting starry-eyed about a new business venture; a company run entirely via texting, aimed at answering any and all questions that get texted in.

Eduardo's going to grit his teeth, and he's going to fly back to Palo Alto once Christy bails Mark's ass out of jail for trying to be her white knight, and he's going to sue for every last cent of the $600 million he's asking for, and he's going to do it for the way Amy says _I did not_ every time he tells people, _elle m'a sauve. La vie, elle m'a sauve._ He's going to do it for the smile on Dustin's face when he thinks Amy and Eduardo can't see him, like he thinks there's no way they could be real.

He's going to do it for every act of kindness, for the dumb dogs, for every single time they've made him feel like he's the only one in the world who's ever been in love, for every time Dustin walked in to find Amy and Eduardo naked, their arms around each other, and declared, "fuck yes, this apartment is now clothing optional!" and dropped his pants like he's allergic.

It's difficult.

But you learn. It's a lot like cooking, you know, love is. You don't have to be very good at it, but everyone has to learn sometime. It's just necessary for survival, and the nice thing is that other people are usually always willing to help.

 

-

"You know," declares Amy, setting the tin down on the stovetop with a clatter and stripping the oven mitts from her hands. "Someday we'll get the hang of this."

"Hey!" Dustin protests. "We do quite well for ourselves, thank you!"

The three of them look at the coq au vin, shifting around pathetically in its seasoning and white wine marinade. Outside the window, the pigeons are making a racket, and somewhere in the distance, the cathedral bells are tolling loud and somber.

"Well," Dustin amends. "We get by."

There's another long pause.

Then, cheerfully, he offers, "You know, how about we forget this nutrition thing and have sex instead? We're really good at that."

"Okay," says Eduardo readily, pushing away from the sink, simultaneous with Amy's "yes, please!"

They get as far as the bedroom before Dustin starts wondering if you can blow balloon animals out of condoms.

Nothing productive gets done for the rest of the afternoon.

 

-

At this moment in time, Amelia Ritter is twenty-four years old, Eduardo Saverin is twenty-three, and Dustin Moskovitz is twenty-two. They live in a sunny apartment in Tours in the heart of France with two dumb labradors and an introductory cookbook.

Their favorite thing in the world is each other.

 

 

-  
la fin

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The original working title for this was "Amelie Ritter's Five Acts of Kindness."
> 
> 2\. How with the pairing? Yeah, I don't know, either, bro. My TSN OT3 is Mark/Christy/Eduardo, but I'd already written that, so for polybigbang, I basically just threw a character roulette, and then was like CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. The inspiration came from [this article](http://www.cracked.com/blog/8-tiny-things-that-stopped-suicides/) and the rest fell together.
> 
> 3\. In case context clues weren't enough, Trevor was supposed to be [this poor kid](http://www.homeofthenutty.com/movies/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=139&pid=142670#top_display_media). Remember him?
> 
> 4\. You did remember to tell Salv [she's amazing, right?](http://salvadore-hart.livejournal.com/39739.html)


End file.
